


Until the Night

by nothingbutfic



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 10:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4915681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingbutfic/pseuds/nothingbutfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several years after X3, Bobby and John find that the hardest battles are fought in the heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Recrimination

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to and inspired by Jess. The odd Stephen King riff abounds, for those who like The Dark Tower.

  
John stands against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. It’s a pretty solid wall, he thinks. Liable to keep him upright for plenty a year. Bit too thin, maybe; he gets to hear far too much noise from upstairs, downstairs and sideways, but then it is neat, well furnished, rent controlled and located a few blocks from the heart of Manhattan. Magneto couldn’t even attempt to get digs this good, he thinks, and it has cable thrown in as well. Not that he pays for it – it’s all thanks to Old Baldy, redemption accepted and promises kept, and even though John’s not a good boy, quite, he’s hardly the worst of the worst in the city of New York.  
  
He knows he’s rambling, thoughts chasing round and round in his head. Anything to avoid broaching a conversation with the young man sitting on the couch, sitting there looking like he just walked out of Corporate America in shirt and tie and jacket and slacks, but then Bobby Drake always did like to live up to expectations, and with the X-Men falling all over themselves to be Proper and Respectable nowadays, John isn’t too surprised. He pushes himself off the wall, and finally unhooks his hands out from under his arms. He needs to stretch the fingers out for a moment; they feel a little bit numb, in counterpoint to the adrenaline fuelled terror that makes him break out in a cold sweat. He’s fought, and he’s killed; he’s championed dictators and threatened the wise, and what really makes his stomach turn to water is the prospect of utter disregard from that blond haired, blue eyed wonder who sits on his couch.  
  
Besides, as long as he’s thinking, hands trapped tight under each arm, at least he’s not biting his nails.  
  
Drake sits there, head bowed, hands cupped as if in prayer, and John all but thinks he’ll take root if he stays like that any longer.  
  
“Earth to Bobby? Earth to Bobby? Hey, if you wanna take up residence again, I do have a rather regular craving for icecream.”  
  
His visitor – and how that pains him, the fact that Bobby’s always a visitor now – treats him to sad, fond smile, and leans back against the couch, stretching his arms over the back of the cushions. “Nah,” he says, a simple dismissal. “Wouldn’t want you to get fat.”  
  
John snorts at that. “Yeah. Me? I’m too all over the place to get fat. You know me, Bobby.”  
  
“Certainly do,” Bobby replies, and there’s that same fond sadness that hangs between them. They know each other, all right; they know each other as friends and lovers and enemies, and it seems clear that by now they know each other a little bit more than comfort strictly allows. He leans to one side a little, and the couch makes a squeaking sound. Bobby clearly doesn’t expect this from the raised eyebrow, and runs fingers over the edge of the cushion he’s sitting on to give himself a little dignity as he bounces up and down a bit. “Another spring’s gone on this old thing?”  
  
“Sure has.”  
  
“I don’t know why you don’t get rid of it. You can hardly invite someone over and get them to squeak all over the place.”  
  
John smiles. He and Bobby have a way of putting each other at ease so well and so simply that it almost seems impossible to think about everything that can come between them. “I think they’d be more shocked at the stains on the fabric,” he deadpans, and can’t help but chuckle when Bobby starts pulling the cushions out to examine them. “Although I guess it might be fun to explain how they got there.”  
  
“I’m a public figure now, remember? You can’t drag my name into this.”  
  
“Right, cause all the fundies hate you so much for being the all-American face of mutantcy, they’ll really wanna kill you when they realise you're a fag.”  
  
“I’m not a fag,” Bobby remarks absently, brow furrowed as he places the cushion back. It’s an old argument between them. “I’m bi. And even if I did only like guys, calling me a fag is so…so very you.”  
  
“Call me old-fashioned,” John grins, and somehow sits on the far end of the couch, as close as he’s gotten to Bobby in six months. “Some things about me just don’t change.”  
  
“They sure don’t,” Bobby says in that sad, weary, loving tone, and John’s struck to the core by the weight of it, the resignation: the fact Bobby loves him, and knows it, and knows it’s not enough. "Like how you're not a fag?"  
  
"I'm not," John agrees. "And nice of you to point that out. I am, however, a confirmed Bobbysexual. Currently in rehab due to lack of supply."  
  
"If you make any comment about shooting up with my white stuff, I am out of here."  
  
"Promise I won't." John raises his hand. "Scout's honor."  
  
"You never were a Scout," Bobby accuses him, fondly, and then picks a small cushion from the cradle of couch arm and back and throws it at him. John lets it bounce off his temple.  
  
"Some mighty artillery you got there, Drake. The fluffy cushions and the sofa of reasonable comfort."  
  
"No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition."  
  
"Or the Scouts. Perhaps you'd rather picture me as a Girl Guide."  
  
Bobby gives him a flat look. "I am not tasting your cookies. And a little reminder that I was the one wearing the uniform around  _this_  house."  
  
"Like I could ever forget..." John sighs, biting his lip like he's going to be transported into a realm of glorious memories, and hopefully porn.  
  
Bobby throws another cushion at him. This time, he catches it.  
  
“Why’d you stop by, anyway?”  
  
“Needed a friendly face.” Bobby loosens his tie, pops open his collar. He cricks his neck, tired and showing it, and John’s struck by a sudden, visceral memory of hauling Bobby over that very couch and biting his neck. It’s so real that he can almost taste the salt of that skin, and he can’t help but wet his lips with his tongue before he speaks.  
  
“Shoulda gone somewhere else, then.”  
  
“Ha ha.”  
  
“Still, public relations wise, it’s a bad thing. I mean, here am I, ex-Magneto junkie, former flatmate – that’s what you called me, right? Your flatmate?” John prattles away, and it’s absolutely astounding how he can keep his tone light and jovial as he mentions things that have always cut him deep and never healed. “I know, you had to and all, with the family, and the missions and going on Fox News to tell the good people of America that mutants could be twinks too, but I have killed recently. Then, I guess so have you.”  
  
“Don’t you start.” Bobby’s reply is instantly savage.  
  
“Start what? I’m just trading shop talk with another murderer.”  
  
“Don’t you ever compare what you did to what I do.”  
  
“What I did three months ago was save your life, remember? I mean, I know the crucial facts of the matter often get forgotten in between being ol’ Johnboy round the head with his mistakes again, but let’s take a break here and focus on the fact you’d be dead right now if it weren’t for me.”  
  
“You don’t know that,” Bobby sighs. Even the arguments between them run tired at times; John feels dwarfed by Bobby’s refusal to actually get involved, to be passionate. More, he’s insulted by it; his ex-boyfriend hasn’t even got enough respect for John to even take him seriously.  
  
“Point one: man had a gun. Point two: man had it loaded. Point three: when you become the face of mutantdom, people are bound to hate you, and I don’t just mean for your choice of tie.”  
  
“And so you fried him.”  
  
“And so I fried him,” John confirms.  
  
“You could have made the gun too hot,” Bobby tells him, and John shrugs, casually sitting himself down on the end of the couch.  
  
“I could have. For fuck’s sake, it was a split second decision. Man with gun, pointed at you.” John’s getting temperamental now, because he really didn’t need this. “Amazingly enough, I don’t like it when people try and shoot those I give a damn about.”  
  
“But it wasn't just anyone, was it? It was me.”  
  
It’s the sort of question that knocks John out of his reverie, makes his chin snap up to look Bobby full in the face, and causes him to blink. “What?”  
  
“Why me?” Bobby demands, with a small contemptuous curl of his lips. “I mean, if it was Kitty or Rogue or someone else, would you have overreacted like that?”  
  
“Hey, don’t be calling my act of bravery an overreaction, dickwit.” That’s typical of John; bright, funny and literate, and he just has to show it by inventing new ways to curse at people. “It’s just, you know, I don’t want to lose you.”  
  
“I ask again: why  _me_?”  
  
John’s getting really sick of that answer, cause hey, if Bobby wants it, he can have it, with both barrels. “Cause you’re Bobby Drake, and no-one fucking messes with my Bobby but me.”  
  
Bobby makes a buzzing noise, like John just lost the jackpot on Wheel of Fortune. “Wrong answer, thanks for playing.” He leans his head back so it rests against the back of the couch, and glances at John. Truth be told, he’s not entirely surprised to see the anger restrained in those blue eyes. “First – I can protect myself. You know what it feels like when you have to step in and save me? It feels like you think I’m some kind of second grader, which I’m not. Second – you don’t get to kill people, not on my watch.”  
  
John sneers at that, and bursts Bobby’s little bubble. “So, it’s fine for you to freeze some guy to the point where he shatters but it’s not okay for me to have a little barbeque?”  
  
“You melted the fucking floor, John!” Bobby all but yells at him, and then turns away from him like he can’t bear the force of his own anger. “Grand Central had to close for a week, and I was the one who had to do the PR job to explain it! The X-Men may kill, but only as a last resort. For you, it’s like some kind of free for all.”  
  
“Only when it’s you,” John admits, softly, bitterly. Soft because he doesn’t want to say it, and bitter because he knows it leaves him weak. “Only when it’s you, okay? And then I can’t think straight, because it’s you being put in danger, and Christ, you get enough in your day job.”  
  
“It’s all part of the job description,” Bobby sighs. “I’m here to help people.”  
  
“And at times you kill, and at times I kill. To defend, and to protect. I may have walked away from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, but Christ, just because I think Magneto was a dumbass, doesn’t mean I think your Professor knows the truth.”  
  
“So there’s Johnboy, delivering his very own third way of mutant politics. Preemptive strikes a speciality.”  
  
“Hey, if it’s good enough for the President, it’s good enough for me.”  
  
“I never thought you’d ever agree with that guy.”  
  
“Don’t rib me, I’m a swing voter. Besides, aren’t you the Republican around here?”  
  
“Christ, I warned you the last time you made that crack…”  
  
“And I stand by it. What’s the difference between you and them, if all your excuses sound the same? Nothing. I don’t think we’re better, I’ve stopped thinking we’re better, I just know we’re  _different_. And  _that_  difference means a fuckload  _of_  difference in this world.”  
  
“I still don’t need you to take care of me!”  
  
“Why the fuck not?”  
  
“Because all it means is that you think I’m some sweet, selfless guy who doesn’t have to go through all the moral problems. I'm not that person, John. I'm not some fucking innocent.”  
  
"I don't think you are. I just think-" And he freezes, and that's an ironic thing to do, and Bobby notices.  
  
"You just think you're the expendable one. That you should be paying for my sins."  
  
John manages a half-smile, half-grimace. "In case I run out of my own to pay for."  
  
"Why the hell you keep whipping yourself for, John? You figure this is absolution? You figure you treated me that bad that you need to die for me? In what universe do you think I would ever want you dead?"  
  
"I don't know how to make things good, Bobby," John admits in a still, calm voice.  
  
"Yeah, well, maybe they can't be  _good_ , Johnboy. Maybe they're just what they are, and we have to suck it up. Stop treating me like the good boy, okay?"  
  
"I will when you stop treating me like the bad guy," John quips in response. "But then, you did always like the bad boys."  
  
"And you're not as half as bad as you like to pretend," snorts Bobby. "So don't even try that whole fake James Dean act; it was old when we were teenagers."  
  
John shrugs. "I could always try being Spike."  
  
Bobby laughs out loud at that. "Okay, points for naming my boyhood crush, but you so can't do the accent."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yeah. I've heard you try."  
  
John pauses for a moment. He can’t help but grin. “You always did know me too well.”  
  
“That mean you’re going to try and kill me now?” Bobby asks him, dryly.  
  
“Pffft. We all know I can kick your ass any time I care to try.”  
  
“Yeah, cause that time when you were evil worked so well for you. How badly did I whip you?”  
  
“I wasn’t honestly giving it my all. Didn’t want you to leave the field empty, you know. That’s me, I’m just so fucking selfless it hurts.”  
  
Bobby stares at him, and then bursts out laughing. “…God, John, sometimes I miss you so much.”  
  
“Sometimes I wake up and I reach for you,” John says, eyes catching Bobby’s as he continues, voice husky from emotion, shaking because he’s never going to get good at saying this. Sometimes, John thinks, is a fucking sorry word. “And you’re not there anymore. And I hate you because you’re not there.”  
  
Bobby takes a deep breath, and breaks the eye contact. “I’m not your Bobby anymore, John.”  
  
“Then don’t come here,” John grounds out, impotently punching the back of the couch cushion. “Don’t come here and talk and have fun and make plans to go grab a bite to eat. Don’t flirt with me, and makes comments about how I like the leather, or your suit. For fuck’s sake, last time we went out you make a crack in front of the waiter about spanking me if I couldn’t decide on my sandwich quick enough. You threatened to take me over your knee and give me what I deserved right then and there. Be my friend, fine. Be someone who flirts with me, fine. Even be someone who maybe has a tumble with me every now and again, no consequences, fine. But if you’re not my Bobby anymore, then stop  _acting_  like him.”  
  
“…I should go.” They both pick themselves off the couch.  
  
“You should,” John breathes, and they stand for a moment, careful not to touch or hug or shake hands, ever mindful it’s exactly what they both want.  
  
“Classes going okay?” Bobby asks; it’s a small, painful attempt to make small talk, to put a band-aid on everything they’ve both said and done. The problem at this point is not that they care – for they do – but they have no idea where to draw the lines.  
  
“Yeah.” John shrugs. He reaches behind him, hand trying to work out the kinks in his muscles from a long day, and a night that he figures is just gonna get longer.  
  
“Wish I’d gone to college.”  
  
“You had a mission. Some of us gave that all up. It’s your job to save the world, Drake. Me? Well, seeing as I’m studying politics and all, I guess I should make a new one.”  
  
Bobby’s eyes rest on his neck and shoulders, watching. It's almost a crack: Bobby likes to watch, and John likes to do. John almost makes it, except he realises he doesn't get to make those kind of jokes any more. Instead, he just grunts and tries to angle his arm better, cause he just can’t quite give himself a proper massage from behind. Almost immediately, Bobby moves cautiously towards him, hands all but ready to take over, and what happens next is a moment they both should have seen coming.  
  
“You want me to-”  
  
“No, it’s fine, I-“  
  
“You sure? Cause I could-“  
  
“I know you could-“  
  
“Never did take care of yourself.” Bobby grins, and John feels a sudden stab of hate deep in his guts for the casual reminiscence, and the affection implied there.  
  
“Look,” he snaps. “You really wanna do this? You wanna stay here, give me a massage, remind us both of how good it can be to just hold one another? Cause knowing the day we’ve both had, we’ll knock back a few beers in the process, and then it’ll be too late and you’ll end up on my bed and we’ll fuck and in the morning I’ll look at you with puppy eyes and you’ll have to tell me it was just sex.” John's voice quakes as he raises his eyes to the wall just over and above Bobby's head; anywhere but looking at him.  
  
Bobby flinches from the cold, cold anger in those words, but in a moment it seems to infuse him with a certain stony resolve. “It wouldn’t happen that way,” he tells John like it’s a fucking commandment, back straightening up as if he’s been riled.  
  
“It’s happened that fucking way  _before_.”  
  
“I know better now,” Bobby states.  
  
John gives him a thin smile. “If I wasn’t such a gentleman, I’d kill you for that remark.”  
  
“Lucky you haven’t got a lighter on you. Must be tough being impotent like that.”  
  
“Get out of my fucking house. It was bad enough when you treated me like this when it had your name on the deed, but now? I don't need another lecture on how happy you are now you've gotten over me, you emotionally superior  _fuck_.”  
  
“I’m going.” Bobby picks his coat and his satchel from the table, and a quiet, sad desperation neither of them knows how to frame hangs heavy in the air between them. They don’t know how not to fight, sometimes. And they know each other far too well, so that when the fighting starts, they can tear each other to pieces oh so casually.  
  
John can’t let go; not of the bitterness, not of the love. He leans against one of the bookshelves – replete with books that Bobby got him to start reading. There isn’t a place in this flat – a place in John’s life – that doesn’t bear Bobby’s mark. Bobby  _changed_  him; well, they changed each other, and Drake just seemed to get the better end of the deal. “Whatever happened to us, Bobby?”  
  
Bobby favours him with a sad smile as he opens the door. “The only thing that happened to us, Johnboy, was us.”  
  
“Yeah.” John moves to hold the door open for him.  
  
“I really  _was_  looking for a friendly face. I do miss you.”  
  
Bobby looks at him, hopeful and young, and when was the last time John saw either of those in his face? He doesn’t seem to know that’s the missing that cuts John to the core; the missing but not the chasing, the fact that Bobby’s content to miss him and give him up.  
  
“Always knew you had crappy taste.” John smiles back because he can’t refuse that hope, never could, and maybe they can get past this, too. After all, they were on opposite sides of a war, once. This seems trivial in comparison, and should be: except John turned good because of one boy, and now that boy is gone.  
  
“I’ll see you round,” Bobby promises, and walks down the hallway with his shoulders hunched, like an old man left humbled by the cares of the world.  
  
John closes the door gently behind him, and rests his forehead against it. It’s a long time before he moves again, but move he does – he has to, after all. The world may be moving on with every second, and he has a life to lead, even if he doesn’t know what to do with it anymore.  
  
*


	2. Resentment.

As things happen, John leaves Bobby alone for a while. His first impulse is to demand an apology, or maybe apologise himself; anything, so long as it’s involved, over the top and gets a reaction. But John has classes and Bobby has to Save The World; and from what John remembers that takes a lot of time. Besides, Bobby texts him from time to time, and there’s email too, so John treasures the smiley faces and the LOLs and pretends he still has a place in Bobby’s life.  
  
Truth be told, he probably still does. They don’t know how to talk to each other sometimes, sure, but when they  _do_ , it’s like they don’t know how to stop. They bicker, they argue, they debate and they communicate. They complete each other’s sentences, and predict each other’s thoughts. It’s subconscious, seems totally natural, and like all good things, had to come to an end sooner or later.  
  
So the phonecalls dwindle and the coffee-and-grabbing-a-donut fade, and finally John calls Bobby up one day because he hasn’t in ages, and it hits him, and he doesn’t know why they’re not talking. It turns out that Bobby has a reason: Bobby always has reasons for things. He’s not all gut instinct and impulse like John, doesn’t forge ahead in blind anger. He’s cautious, controlled and perhaps a little cool; it’s part of why John loves him so sometimes.  
  
It’s part of why John hates him sometimes.  
  
They agree to catch up outside Madison Square Gardens one night, and John feels remarkably upbeat, cause hey, after two years in the Big Apple he might as well be a native. Of course, he never thought about going to college upstate, never considered Boston, and never wondered how his never considering Boston might be taken, but then John doesn’t get these crucial details. He waits all rugged up in parka and gloves and scarf and beanie, puffing breathes out into the winter chill, and when Bobby turns up, suitably attired, John just can’t resist a crack.  
  
“You look a little cold there, Frosty. Thought this was your kind of environment.”  
  
Bobby eyes him up and down, and his mouth curls a little upward to one side. John knows what’s coming, knows that even-handed, single-minded, fond look, and prepares for a proper drubbing. “Nice choice of color there, John. Hope you wanted to look a blueberry.”  
  
“Well, I know how much you like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”  
  
They both burst into laughter at exactly the same time, and ignore the odd looks from the passers-by. Besides, they’re New Yorkers; they’ve learned to look, but not to interfere. At any rate, obligatory razzing sorted, John turns in a semi-circle, and then back the other way, cause he’s really got no fucking idea where to go. It takes them about half an hour to find a theatre, tickets, popcorn, and then they settle down to watch Spiderman 3.  
  
It’s not a bad film, John thinks, although the whole idea of some guy getting powers and not being a mutant is just kind of stupid: he feels absently offended, like someone cashed in on his life story and screwed it up in the process. Probably all the politics classes he’s been taking. Still, it’s good; good dialogue, good action, good visuals, and John’s reformed enough now to recognise that he was looking at something other than Kirsten Dunst’s tits, but not quite reformed enough to mention it.  
  
They pile out of the theatre with the rest of the crowd, and they could be any pair of undergrads, enjoying a night out together. Buddy-buddy, except when the crowd threatens to get in their way, Bobby’s hand finds his and squeezes it, and John has to grin to himself at that. He doesn’t let go till they find a nice coffee place in the Village, and Bobby accuses him of checking out the waiter as they settle into their seats.  
  
“This from a man who thought Tobey Maguire was hot,” John quips across the table, and he’s all but forgotten that he’s ordered a mocha caramel latte with extra foam, cause he’s there and Bobby’s there, and only two people in the world exist right now.  
  
“He was wearing a tight uniform,” Bobby smirks. “It’s like a Pavlov thing. You should know all about that.”  
  
“So, you fancy Logan then?” John raises an eyebrow, and rewards himself with a chuckle when Bobby recoils in horror.  
  
“Don’t be sick. Besides, don’t tell me you didn’t like him too.”  
  
“Logan? Not really my type.”  
  
“I meant Peter Parker, you dipshit.”  
  
John amuses himself by fiddling with the napkins on their table; he’s one of those guys who always needs to keep moving, to keep doing something. Doesn’t know why, and doesn’t care. “Oh, I’ve always been a one man guy,” he drawls out, smile flashing up at Bobby, and the smile fades when he sees the way Bobby winces at the compliment. Rather than deal, John covers with a joke. “’Sides, red’s not my color.”  
  
Bobby still doesn’t say anything, so John keeps on fiddling with the napkin until the waiter comes back with their coffees and mercifully relieves the tension.  
  
“So, Bobby, tell me, what’s been keeping you busy lately? We don’t meet up like we used to, and I can tell it’s official business cause I haven’t seen it on CNN.” It’s a deadpan comment, just another joke, but it falls flat because John’s jittery, and Bobby sees through him. Always could.  
  
“Oh, it is X-business,” Bobby tells him, and now he’s the one playing, turning his coffee glass around in the circle of his hand. “After…everything, we’ve started hanging out together. It’s a new initiative.”  
  
“Everything happened three years ago, Bobby.” John says it like it’s obvious, like his meaning is clear.  
  
“So? I’m a leader now; I have roles, positions, responsibility. The school’s good – hell, the school’s better than it was. It’s a chance for us to hang out socially, not just the danger room or classes or the odd spot of late night TV. There’s only so much bonding over The Daily Show we can do.”  
  
“So you all hit the bars or something?”  
  
Bobby nods. “Well, those of us who can. We usually go for dinner one a week to start off with. Salem. Boston. Image projectors at the ready, and we pile into some McDonalds, or KFC, and act like normal people for once.”  
  
John’s grin is sharp. “If you were normal people, Bobby, you wouldn’t need the image projectors.”  
  
Bobby continues as if John hasn’t spoken, finger trailing around the rim of his coffee now, leaving an icy trail behind. John doesn’t need to be told Bobby likes his coffee iced, after all. “Then the kids go back to the Institute and the rest of us go clubbing. Have some laughs, a few beers; appreciate each other.”  
  
“Wow.” John’s sarcasm is heavy. “You’ve got yourself your very own revivalist movement there. I’m sure there’s much hugging, open talks and singing of Kum By Ya.”  
  
Bobby’s eyes flash up to him, not cold, not even cool; bewildered and mystified, annoyance creeping into his voice that John could be so casually cruel. “It works for  _us_ , John.”  
  
John looks at him for a second, startled, before he lets out a low chuckle, and tosses the napkin at the table. “You’re really into this shit,” he comments, disdainful, and takes an appreciative sip of his coffee.  
  
“What did you think, it was like school? Finished with graduation? Being an X-Man isn’t a part time job.”  
  
John takes another sip. “Yeah, well, some of us got out of that game a while ago.”  
  
“Yeah, well, some of us didn’t,” Bobby says flatly. “Some of us aren’t you.”  
  
John makes a waving gesture, dismissive. “Hey, if you wanna do it, I’m not complaining. I mean, some people think orange is a valid fashion choice, and they’re welcome to it, and I’m welcome to think they look stupid.”  
  
“You think I’m stupid?”  
  
“I didn’t say that. I said…I don’t get why you do it, that’s all.”  
  
“Why don’t you come along one night?”  
  
That floors John. He leans over the table, eyes wide, and just has to confirm it for himself. “What?”  
  
“Why don’t you come along one night?” Bobby repeats, easy. Almost too easy. “When we go drinking.”  
  
“Yeah, cause me and Rogue and alcohol will go so well together.”  
  
Bobby smiles at him, pleased and amused at the same time, and John knows when that happens he’s gonna do whatever the hell Bobby Drake wants. “Come on,” he implores. “If I can make up with her, so can you.”  
  
“There’s a difference between you and me, Bobby,” John deadpans.  
  
Bobby leans forward, steepling his hands on the table. “Yeah?” he asks, grinning, and they’re so close they could almost be kissing, noses all but rubbing.  
  
“Yeah. Well, two differences. First, I don’t want to make up with Rogue.”  
  
“You and your grudges,” Bobby sighs. “You’re so immature. What’s the second?”  
  
“The second, and most crucial difference between you and me?” John lets the question linger in the air for a while, and then sits back in his chair, the very picture of satisfied, smug calm. “Style, Bobby. Pure and simple.”  
  
“What, you mean I got it and you don’t?” Bobby says with a completely straight face, and can’t help but laugh at the look of outrage that crosses John’s face when he realises he’s been beaten.  
  
Sometimes they just can’t help being in love with each other.  
  
Bobby places his palms flat on the table, and he’s having fun, and so’s John. “Come along,” he asks, one more time. “Kitty’ll be glad to see you. It’ll be great, I know it will.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“I’m sure. It’s my favorite thing to do.”  
  
John smirks. “What, you prefer doing them to doing me? Man, all those  _people_. Gotta be exhausting.”  
  
Bobby just rolls his eyes. “What _ever_ , John.”  
  
*  
  
Five minutes after John arrives at the bar, he knows he’s out of place. Fifteen minutes, and he’s bored. Twenty and he’s frustrated. Half an hour and he wants to start slapping people around. It’s not that the crowd is overtly hostile; they’re not. They’re just chummy, in the way groups tend to be. He doesn’t get include in the conversations buzzing around the table, and he’s kind of glad, because he doesn’t understand any of them. He knows these people; lived with them, studied with them, ate and slept and shitted with them. Fought with them a little, and then he left and fought against them. They don’t bear him any great malice, and John briefly wonders if he’s really that insignificant. But no, Bobby’s his friend – Bobby’s his ex – and so they’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. They’ll be nice and welcoming and friendly and never explain, never confide, never consider. The references go completely over his head, as do the injokes. Neither spiteful or mean, John feels all the more lonely because of it; because he can feel them welcome each other, and he just downs his beer and joins in five seconds too late with the laughter.  
  
Kitty tries to make him feel like he’s someone. She asks him how college is going, and he tells her, and then someone John doesn’t know overhears and asks him what he’s studying, and then people start talking about the classes they take via Xavier’s Institute for the Gifted thanks to the friendly people at Boston or Dartmouth or whatever, and John smiles, sips his beer and wishes he was somewhere else.  
  
He grows to loathe these people because they’re not him; he can hear what they’re saying – he gets the sense of the words, the language, but the context is all gibberish. A few times they try and engage him in discussion about politics or morals or Xavier’s guiding philosophy, and when he objects stridently and forcefully, gesturing with his (third) beer bottle, they look at him like he’s some kind of wild beast, like the concept of dissent is alien to them.  
  
John knows not to pick a fight with these people; they’re Bobby’s friends. Some of them are his/used to be his, too. Not that Bobby has noticed there’s a fight on the way. He’s too busy flitting around talking to everyone – everyone except John, it seems, who he favors with the odd glance, or a reassuring squeeze to his shoulder, or that most treacherous of comments: “You having a great time? I’m having a great time.” So John fiddles with his beer bottle, bides his time, and manages a smile every time Bobby comes around. He tries to get his attention every now and again, but Bobby is too busy grinning at something Rogue said, or laughing it up with Manuel or managing to even get Colossus to crack a smile. True, the big guy has a sense of humor, but he laughs so rarely it’s like he thinks he’s made of china; or maybe the rest of them are. John can read the signals; he’s no slouch when it comes to body language. Besides, he knows half of them from back when he still believed, and the new ones aren’t that much different. They have the same conviction, the same fervour: they don’t think, they don't  _need_  to think, they  _know_  they’ll save the world. They’re a family, and it’s like he’s back at school; because back then, they were a family just the same, and he wasn’t a part of it. Not for lack of trying, but ever the outsider, he didn’t get it then, and he doesn't get it now.  
  
Finally, the party breaks up. John’s on his fifth beer, slouching and surly in his seat, and he looks at them all hugging each other with wry condescension. Even in parting, when they’re bound to see one another tomorrow in class and at lunch – hell, when they’re all piling into some SUVs and heading back up to the school together – they still feel the need to give each other back slaps and kind words and kudos, celebrating what they all did and learned and achieved today.  
  
These people, John realises, would be really good on Oprah. What gets him is that Bobby’s not simply part of it, but all but the chief architect. He wishes everyone a fond goodbye, handshake or hug part of the deal, complete with personalised comment. John watches them all trail out the door to the street, as Bobby does his kind host routine. The point being that it’s not a routine; John can tell that Bobby believes it, every kind and honest and supportive word, and he has a sudden mystery: he realises he doesn’t know the man he fell in love with.  
  
That leaves him off balance, and combined with the night of cliquish-yet-self-congratulatory hell – as well as the five beers – he’s of a mood to spoil someone’s fun as he and Bobby leave the bar, spilling out onto the cold Boston pavement side by side. Bobby’s promised to show him the nightlife; John suddenly feels like he despises this man, and doesn’t want to go anywhere with him.  
  
“That was something, huh?” Bobby comments, not really wanting a response, and John just keeps his head down and grunts. “I mean, when you came out with those arguments about the Xavier philosophy to Siryn, I just about died.”  
  
“I’m sorry if I spoiled your little cult meeting, but not everyone agrees with you.”  
  
“You made that pretty clear. My friends think you’re…interesting.”  
  
“You know, I really couldn’t give a damn what your friends think. I came for you, and I came for Kitty. And you really didn’t have time for me. So I won’t be coming again.”  
  
“If you did, I’d ask you to be a little more considerate of others,” Bobby warns.  
  
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t pick a fight. I didn’t yell. I didn’t even swear – much. But apparently hearing me critique your grand and glorious mission gave Rogue a boo boo? Shame you can’t kiss it better,” John mutters under his breath.  
  
“If you’re not gonna say something nice, John, shut your damn trap.” Their tone is still light, almost conversational: it’s the fact they’re both holding it in that lets them know just how serious this is.  
  
“Or what, you won’t invite me to any more Scout meetings in case I make people think about what they’re doing?”  
  
“You’re not supposed to come along and break up our entire movement! You're not Che fucking Guevara!”  
  
“There. That’s it. Right there. ‘Movement.’ The ‘Xavier Philosophy’. Even when I was at school, it wasn’t quite like that. What have you become, Bobby? Jerry Falwell for mutants?”  
  
“Like you ever had a problem with mutant fundamentalism,” Bobby scoffs.  
  
They stop in the street, turn and stare at one another. Puffs of hot air give texture to the night as they breathe. The pedestrians part around them easily, naturally, ignoring both their presence and their conversation.  
  
“Yeah, I didn’t, but then I learned better. What have you learned in two years, Bobby? Turning Xavier into some kind of saint?”  
  
“For Christ’s sake, stop making this all about how much tougher and wiser you are than the rest of us. That’s the lesson you learned. That’s not my way of doing things.”  
  
“What is your way of doing things, then? You all have fun, pat each other on the back, and tell each other how wonderful you are? Is that how things go, nowadays? You never make a mistake?”  
  
“If we do, it’s not your place to call it.”  
  
“But I think it is. Cause someone has to.”  
  
“And you think that we’re self-righteous.   _God_!”  
  
“Bobby, I’m just looking out for you here. And Kitty. And anyone else who hasn’t fallen victim to this hive mentality.”  
  
“You really think that’s what we are?”  
  
“Oh, I think worse than that. I think you’re a bunch of wackos with no guiding idea beyond your own brilliance, so you just let anything go cause you can’t do anything wrong. I think you make Magneto look coherent in comparison. It’s chickenshit, Bobby. It's mutant fucking  _amateur hour_  here, and you go on the air and tell all the nice normal people how great mutants are, and oh, we won’t use our powers around you, promise. Mutants  _are_  their powers, Bobby. We shouldn't have to cover up in public; they're the ones who should deal, and you're leading the capitulation cause you can't stop thinking how  _wonderful_  all your friends are.”  
  
Bobby stares at him, cold. “You really think that.”  
  
“I really think that. I think you’re wasting yourself with this shit. I think Kitty is, too.  
  
There’s a moment in every life when we recognise the complete strangeness of other people. We make assumptions and take for granted agreement and acquiescence, because we believe we all have to see the world the same way: that we must, cause we can’t be the ones who are wrong. At some point, that jars, and falls apart, and we wonder what lies we’ve been basing our decisions up until that moment on as we look at someone we don’t even begin to understand.  
  
This is their moment.  
  
“You can do it if you want,” John tells him, sensing the mood and trying to defuse it in his own, clumsy way. “I just thought you should know that as your friend, I find it really fucking stupid.”  
  
“I just think, as my friend, that you really need to go fuck yourself,” Bobby tells him, quite seriously, biting, without too much anger in his tone. He’s too mad to actually get mad; what he needs is to get away, and so he goes storming off down the street, without much concern for how John gets home. If John wants to play the outsider, and set himself apart from people, then he can take care of himself, concern be damned.  
  
“Don’t you walk away from me,” John hisses at him, reaching for his shoulder, and Bobby whirls around, anger in his voice and fury in his eyes. John flinches for a moment, but doesn’t give up, or recoil – Bobby knows all too well that John doesn’t give up when he’s in a fight. If anything, he just comes back stronger.  
  
“Don’t  _walk away_  from you? Don't walk away from  _you_?” Bobby asks, voice low and venomous, spitting out the words. “What, you’re afraid to take a little of your own medicine, Johnny? I seem to remember-”  
  
“Don’t call me, Johnny, it makes me feel-”  
  
“Like you’re five, I know. You also might notice how I’m not giving a fuck. You always walked out on me, Johnny. Always. When we were friends, you walked away. When we were dating, you freaked out about being in love with me, and you walked away. And then when I took you back, you walked away again. You even moved away from me to go to college."  
  
"I can't believe you're ragging me for that, Drake. Jeez. New York just had the better program."  
  
"Yeah. Right. How many times do you think you can take me for a ride before I learn my lesson? Don’t fucking trust St. John Allerdyce, that’s what I learned. Don't let him in.”  
  
“So it’s your turn to walk away now, then? Punish me for all my sins? Man, that’s big of you.”  
  
“This isn’t all about you, you egotistical turd. This is about me taking care of me and my friends and making sure you can’t hurt me any more.”  
  
“How do you expect me to act, when you blow me off for this mob?”  
  
“This  _mob_  are my friends!”  
  
“And so am I!”  
  
“That doesn’t mean you get special treatment, John! You can’t just demand my time.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I’m glad I’ve got other friends. At least they understand me and don’t go around looking for converts to the Church of the Seven Sacred Mutants.”  
  
“Why don’t you go off and talk to them, then?” Bobby snarls, and it’s then that John’s face falls, when he finally gets this isn’t just another fight.  
  
“I don’t need them like I need you.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Bobby calls him on it, and he’s never looked so certain. “You just need me to need you, John.”  
  
“I’ve changed!”  
  
“Yeah. Now you’re a jackass for the forces of good. Still makes you a jackass. I mean, great, that you’re improving. But being less of a fuck up doesn’t make you  _not_  a fuck up, John. Whenever I get close, you cut and run. Always have, always will.”  
  
“And whenever I say a word wrong, you collapse and don’t talk to me for six months. Christ, it’s not like I want you to slit your wrists.”  
  
“No, you just want me to become a completely different person to who I am.”  
  
“And you want me to become a completely different person to who  _I_  am. You don’t even tell me what’s wrong. Bobby. How can I  _fix_  things if you don’t  _talk_  to me?”  
  
“And what if I don’t  _want_  them fixed?” asks Bobby quietly, dangerously. That takes all the wind out of John’s sails and then some. He doesn’t even know how to respond to that, gaping like he’s desperate for air, mouth moving slackly open and closed.  
  
“ _Excuse_  me?” John wonders, like it’s the most stunning question in the history of the world. “What the  _fuck_  did you just say?”  
  
“What if I’m finally happy not having you put me through shit,” Bobby tells him, making it more of a statement than a question, and he knows he’s on the verge of tears due to having to admit it, finally. "And what if I'm happy with all my friends, because at least they don't make me feel like a stupid, shit-for-brains fool who's wasting his life."  
  
They look at each other for a moment that seems to be infinite. John’s the first to give in, blinking, his voice catching. “What about all those times you’ve said I make you stronger?” he asks, and there’s too much emotion in those words to be contained.  
  
In response, Bobby’s voice is cool, calm and collected. “Sure you made me stronger. So much stronger that I don’t need you anymore.”  
  
Something twists in John’s face; it might be hate or rage or unspeakable pain. “Well. Glad we sorted this out, then. You can take your chickenshit, mutant apologist friends and all give yourselves a pat on the back for getting rid of me. I’m sure there’ll be kudos for that.”  
  
“My John never would have said that,” Bobby mutters, but it’s too late for anything. Too late for them both.  
  
“Guess I was never  _your John_ ,” John tells him, bitter and demeaning, and then he turns, and loses himself amongst the pedestrians of Boston, just one in the crowd. He likes it that way. "Oh, and don't call me!"  
  
"Like the hell I would!" Bobby yells back, but he's already shaking his head. Once the anger's gone, and the rage has cooled, there's the inevitable question: where do we go from here? Neither of them have an answer.  
  
*


	3. Resistance.

Bobby doesn’t call John, of course. He’s known for keeping his promises. John’s good at keeping his word, as well – as long as it breaks him in the process. He has the consistency of a demagogue and the fire of a saint. He’s used to causes with all the experience martyrdom allows, and now that he’s gone out of that game, he sees the fervour in Bobby, the joy-in-doing, and wonders/fears that his friend-lover-whatever will prove to not go down that same path.  
  
So Bobby doesn’t call him. That’s okay, John figures. He needs some time to vent, some space to take stock; some moments alone to appreciate the way things stand. It was, after all, just a fight. They’ve fought before, no big. They’ll probably fight again, no big.  
  
John gives him a week. Then he gives him two. Then three. It turns into a month, and John gives in and calls Bobby. Well, actually, he emails him; that way he can say no calling was involved if Bobby says he was a hypocrite. Emails him one day, and leaves it be. He gets no response after a few days, then a week. There’s been no major news story, and Kitty would have let him know if anything happened to him. So he emails again, and then again, and then again. He gets one response back: I’m busy.  
  
Fucking asshole, John thinks. Fucking righteous asshole. I give him years of my life, and he can’t even tell me how he is beyond I’m busy. And there was a greater, quieter hurt inside that: that he can't even ask how I am.  
  
But he controls himself, and responds politely but coolly, telling Bobby he’d like them to grab a bite to eat together, catch up, when Bobby gets a chance. He gets no reply to that, either, not after days, or weeks. When he rings Bobby’s mobile, it’s always busy or switched off, and the messages he leaves never get answered.  
  
Something fairly stinks in the state of Massachusetts, John thinks, and he’s not so stupid now as to think of everyone’s best intentions. So, he starts to snark a little, cause Johnboy always did know how to bring it. His texts contain barbs; his emails grow increasingly passive-aggressive and hooked.   _I want to catch up_  turns into  _When you have time to deal with a peon such as myself, it’d be great if you’d bother with me_.   _If you don’t respond, I’m gonna get carpal tunnel from all the texting_ becomes  _What gives, Drake?_  
  
From day to day, he gets no reply apart from the odd ‘I’m busy’ or ‘TTYL, k?’ and that quickly becomes repetitive. He seethes, and the seething grows. He feels impotent like this, powerless, and all because he let his heart go to some dickwad who doesn’t know how to communicate. He gets where he went wrong, of course: he just doesn’t see why it’s different to any other time they’ve fought and made up.  
  
John has a sneaking suspicion of exactly what Bobby’s so busy with. A bar in Boston, and hey, it’s one where everybody knows Bobby’s name, even if any seat for John is conspicuously absent on account of Drake’s friends being shit-smoking idiots. To get confirmation, he rings Kitty. Asks where Bobby’s been, cause he hasn’t responded much in a while. Sure, John just got a text back, again saying how tired and busy Bobby was, so he’ll talk better when he’s free. Except it seems he’s never free.  
  
“Oh,” says Kitty, and John can hear the awkwardness radiating from the phone, even though she’s hundreds of miles away. Kitty never wanted to get put between them, never should have been put between them, but now  _between them_  is all there is. “He’s been hanging out with the team a lot, you know. I’m sure he’ll get back to you eventually,” she tells him, and sounds like she almost believes it.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. I know you want to talk to him. He reads out your emails sometimes.”  
  
“He does?” John asks dryly, and a part of him is amazed at the very fact he can say that. “Wow. I’m flattered.”  
  
“I’m sure he’ll get back to you eventually,” she repeats, and she sounds more hollow the second time around.  
  
He thanks her, hangs up, and briefly considers smacking his head against the wall until he dies. Something nice and simple like that, to take the pain away. But hey, if a bar in Boston is what Bobby wants, then hey, that’s what Bobby’ll get. He’ll get the bar and his X-Men, and his ex-man, too, and John can play nice if it means he gets Bobby interested. A few emails later, and John’s set up a meeting with Rogue.  
  
The meeting with Rogue doesn’t go so well.  
  
That rankles; how it rankles. John hits the streets one night, lets them carry him where they will. He ends up at Grand Central (floor fixed and distinctly unmelted, thank you), and if it’s fate – like in one of those books Bobby made him read, the ones John always wanted to read as a kid but dismissed as nerdy – then it’s fate. Ka, as Bobby would have put it, but then John spits the word under his breath just so he can hate him a little more. Ka, from some book John wants to call Godawful because Bobby got him reading it, but which isn't Godawful at all. It isn’t enough that Bobby tamed him, no sir. It isn’t enough that Bobby changed him, certainly not. It’s that Bobby made him, pure and simple. John thinks about things half the time in terms of ‘this was what Bobby liked’ or ‘would he see this film with me?’ It’s ironic; he’s only adjusted to the idea of sharing his life with someone after he left them, and since he left Bobby, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Sure, he has other friends. Sure, he tells Bobby about them fervently and frequently. Part of that’s to show Bobby how well he’s doing without him; part of that’s to show himself how well he’s doing without Bobby. But still, he can’t pass by a book, a film – a space in what used to be their house – without thinking of it in relation to the man he left behind. Bobby got him reading and watching and thinking all kinds of shit and it doesn’t matter if his other friends like it, cause everyone’s their own person and the conversations are never the same. John knows he’d be lessened if any of his friends stopped talking to him; this one just hurts more than the rest.  
  
So he lets  _ka_  carry him towards the ticketing booth and buys himself one ticket on the good ol’ creaking Amtrak all expenses paid to Boston. Fuck it. He can cut class. He’s a young guy; it’s practically compulsory. Besides, he has friends there, or a sick aunt, or whatever he tells his professors, assuming they actually care. He can think of something.  
  
The train ride is boring; he can’t see shit out the window, and he’s got no book, so he curls up in one of the seats and amuses himself with the bitterness of his thoughts. The train gets into Boston in the early hours of the morning; he crashes at some hotel that’s thoroughly non-descript, and pounds the pavement from midday to sundown. He hangs around the bar, hands in his pockets, chin down, coat lapels up like he’s out of some bad detective movie. He even grabs a bite to eat at the diner across the road, and so he watches as the X-Men tumble out of a couple of SVUs in their best civilian gear, glad of a town that doesn’t recognise them by sight. In Boston, they can be themselves, whatever that is. John knows all too well that Salem’s long remembered exactly who they are.  
  
He eats, he drinks his soda and he stares out the window. The waitress is all blond hair, big tits and faded suburban glory, the type John would have gone for in a flash five years ago, but now John barely notices when she refills his cup. In a few hours, they pile back out onto the sidewalk, looser and even more affectionate than when they arrived.  
  
John keeps his head down and pushes a stray fry round the plate until well after they’re gone. Then he thanks the waitress, gives her a twenty, and tells her to keep the change. There was a time when he would have made a scene, of course. Gone right over there, yelled, waved his arms about, got right in Bobby's face, and called him all sorts of names. John recognises absently the fact he's not doing that very thing probably means he's grown as a person, but it's not much consolation on the train ride home.  
  
Home is the only option, and it feels a little bigger and a lot more lonely than when he set out.  
  
After a while of mooching through his classes and trying to pretend like he doesn’t care, Bobby actually emails him. Halle-fucking-lujah. It’s to say how busy and tired he is, and he misses him.  
  
“Sure you miss me,” John growls at the screen. “If you missed me we’d be fucking talking now.”  
  
 _Then don’t ignore me_ , he fires back, fingers flying over the keys.   _Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong._  
  
 _It’s hard_ , Bobby emails back, after an hour or two.   _And I know I owe you an email. I’m not ignoring you, promise._  
  
It’s after this point that Bobby proceeds to actively ignore him. Nothing, nada, zip, except for the ‘I’m busy’ message, the very same one that just burns John a little more, cause Bobby clearly doesn’t get just how much it hurts to be reduced to two words. Even getting that requires John to send off ten or so texts a day, and he knows how ludicrous it is – he knows the message he’s supposed to be getting – but he just can’t quite give up.  
  
He adjusts. He has to. He gets used to not thinking about Bobby, not referencing Bobby, not categorising things in terms of Bobby.  
  
And then, of course, Bobby has to turn up.  
  
He knocks on the door sometime after midnight, when John’s fulfilling every deeply repressed geek fantasy by kicking it back old style with a beer and the DVD of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He’s dressed in sweatpants, sneakers and a top; typical frat boy wear, if for the fact he’s not a frat boy.  
  
“Hey,” John greets him, and tries not to blink too much in sheer surprise.  
  
“I knew you’d be up. You’re always up this late.”  
  
“Thanks for giving away my secret plan,” John deadpans, because it’s so easy, the pattern they fall into; except this time it’s an avoidance and a defence. “Remind me to kill you,” he says, turning away from the door and slouching back to the couch. Bobby gets the hint, cause he’s a bright, bright boy, and shuffles inside after him.  
  
“Oh, you don’t wanna kill me. You wanna make me suffer a little first,’ he replies, and their banter is sad and tired now, like them, and all too melancholy, but John assumes if he can sit on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table without killing his guest, then score one for the legacy of memory and the rules of civility.  
  
“You have no idea,” he says, and manages a meagre smile.  
  
“Whatcha watching? Princess Bride?”  
  
“Holy Grail. I seem to have been emotionally scarred from watching Princess Bride, after my douchebag of an ex-roommate used to throw popcorn and tease me for my reaction to it.”  
  
Bobby chuckles. “You cried like a girl at the sad parts, Johnboy. I had no idea you were such a sap.”  
  
“We dated for a year beforehand, and you had no idea I was a sap?” John lifts an eyebrow.  
  
“Nope,” Bobby tells him, and the smile’s clearly pained, now.  
  
“Well,” John muses, half to himself. “That says a fucking lot, doesn’t it?”  
  
Bobby doesn’t say anything in response.  
  
“Why don’t you talk to me, Bobby?” asks John, and flicks off the TV set before he sets the remote down right next to him on the couch.  
  
“Why do I need to talk to you?” Bobby wonders softly, and doesn’t even look at him. “You made your feelings pretty clear. We don’t agree on anything – hell, you liked pointing that out. And you’ve made jokes about it via email, or text – why should I have to talk to someone who keeps telling me how wrong I am about everything?”  
  
“I’m losing you to a group of candyass teenagers who think they’re God,” John says just as quietly.  
  
“No one’s making you think about them.”  
  
“Yes,” John tells him, a little frantic. “ _You_  do. Everything you do revolves around them. You know it. I know it. You talk about them, about what they think and what they do. You all but squeal over every fucking aspect in a mainly yet affectionate way. I’m losing you to a group of candyass teenagers who think they have a clue. I think they’re shit. I’m always going to think they’re shit. I guess I’m giving myself an exit strategy.”  
  
“An  _exit strategy_?”  
  
“Yeah. If this falls apart, I can just say we didn’t get each other.”  
  
“Since when do you play politics with our relationship?” demands Bobby, one hand on his hip, the other gesturing angrily.  
  
“Don’t give me this,” John retorts.  
  
“I ask again, since when do you play politics with our relationship?”  
  
“Since when do you  _not_?” John fires back. “Hell, you haven’t talked to me in three months, but you’ll go out of your way to make nice to these people?”  
  
“These  _people_?! Christ, is there anywhere you won’t go to pick a fight, Johnny? It was their  _bar_  you were in!”  
  
“And it’s my country, and perhaps your X-Men would run a little smoother if there wasn’t so much kudos being strewn around. You can’t tell me it’s been plain sailing; you’ve bitched to me about things in the past few years. Kitty’s bitched to me. Heck, I think the entire world knows some of the gossip. I said it was amateur hour, and I meant it.”  
  
“Why the fuck would I wanna talk to that, okay? It’s hard, cause damn, if I slap you down, maybe you’ll run again.”  
  
“Oh, don’t bring that up.” John somehow got the remote in his hand; now he’s using it to gesticulate with. “How many times you gonna make me pay for that, Bobby? How many times you gonna make me an excuse for you being avoidant?”  
  
“You’ve told me how I can’t criticise you-”  
  
“I never said no such fucking thing. I told you it hurts when you call me a jackass. It does. More than if anyone did. But to not talk to me at all? I get the fucking message, okay?” There’s a certain angry bitterness to John’s voice; he’s annoyed it’s come this far. And he’s annoyed he still cares.  
  
“Trouble with you, John, is that you never read the messages right.”  
  
“Trouble with you, Bobby, is that you never knew how to send a clear one. How many times in the last year have you gotten cranky at me cause I liked some girl? Or even just  _looked_  at her? Hell, you’ve lectured me on that one friend I had, from media class. Cassie. And how you couldn’t stand her, cause she was crass and vulgar and clichéd and you hated that I fooled around with her, because you couldn't get it at all. Every complaint was about me. I felt sorry for the poor girl, after you gave me your rundown on how she was Not Good Enough for Johnboy. So don’t take the high ground now.” John takes a breath. “If you wanted me to be yours, then tell me to be yours, and I will. Otherwise, get the fuck off my back.”  
  
“It’s not a year ago. Things have changed.”  
  
“Oh, so it’s okay for you to lecture me on my friends, but not okay for me to lecture you on yours.”  
  
“I’m not your Bobby any more. We recognised that. And you’re not my John anymore, so what will we talk about?” Bobby’s tone is cruel and cutting; openly sarcastic. “Why would I talk to a stranger? Besides, if I give any fucking hint, John, you always take it the wrong way. You always, always assume the moment that I wish you a nice day we’re getting back together.”  
  
“So you decided not to give me any wishes at all. Clever, that.   _Smooth_. Makes me feel all glowy inside when you can’t even say you’re happy I’m not  _dead yet_.” John raises his voice on the last phrase, overenunciating all the words, mostly because he doesn’t know how else to get his indignation out.  
  
“Bite me.”  
  
His reposte is off as soon as it’s been said. “You wish.”  
  
“You forget how different we are sometimes, you know that? At least I don’t blow up over minor shit.”  
  
“No, I know very clearly just how alike we are,” John blazes, for all that Bobby’s the taller man. This is his house, and his life, and well. “This is  _my_  house and  _my_  life and you gave both of those up, so do not fucking lecture me on the moral superiority on cutting yourself off from me to go on a crusade with some cultists.”  
  
“They are my friends, and you won't pull this  _crap_  on them.” Bobby’s voice is low and deadly serious.  
  
“What, you wanna go me, Frosty? Be a fairer fight than Alcatraz.”  
  
“You mean this time you’ll cheat,” shrugs Bobby, like it’s an established fact. “I know you don’t like to lose, after all.”  
  
“You think it’s okay that you get to tell me how happy you are and how much stronger you are – how I made you so strong you don’t need me any more – but I don’t get to do the same?”  
  
“Yes,” Bobby cries out. “Because every time you tell me how one of your college people is the kind of friend you listen to, all I can think is what do they have that I didn’t, cause if you listened to me once in a while, we’d still be  _together_ , Johnboy.”  
  
“You don’t think I  _know_  that?” John scoffs, voice breaking. “You don’t think I fucking think of how happy you made me, oh, every goddamn  _week_  and how stupid I was to throw that away?”  
  
“You’ve got to let that go, John,” Bobby tells him, quietly.  
  
“Yeah. I’ll let it go when you do. Cause it’s not like every fucking week you change your mind over whether you’re jealous or not. You always make me feel if I just found that one thing I was missing, that I just don’t  _get_ , I could have you back.”  
  
“And you always make me feel like I was never enough for you in the first place.” Bobby looks down and shuffles his feet. “And you always wanted sex, and jeez, I wasn’t just your blow up doll.”  
  
“Okay, first? I didn’t always want sex. I saw you maybe once a month and I missed my boyfriend, and I expressed that in a physical way, alright? You're fucking  _hot_ , so deal! Second? I only got mad when you took that option off the table and made me guilty for wanting you! Christ! My boyfriend suddenly doesn’t find me a turn on, but is happy to flirt with the waiter when we go out and get coffee. No wonder I had problems.”  
  
“Yeah, well, maybe you were supposed to come after me.”  
  
“Yeah, well, maybe you were supposed to come after  _me_  when I ran off.”  
  
There’s a definite pause as they blink at one another. Bobby runs his fingers through his hair, and lets the pause drag on. John knows he’s not quite ready to say something yet.  
  
“…John. You either thought I was being too clingy or too distant. And I never knew which it was until it was too late. Those moments all looked the same.”  
  
John manages a crooked grin. “Guess that must have sucked for you.”  
  
“You should come with a fucking manual,” Bobby retorts, and wipes at his nose. It seems like he was about to tear up, but he’s all a-OK and under control now.  
  
“Spoils the mystery,” John deadpans. “Look. When you tell me how wonderful these people are? It makes me realise there’s a side of you I don’t get, and never will. I feel lost, okay?”  
  
“And when you talk about how all these friends at college understand your thinking, it makes me feel stupid,” Bobby admits quietly.  
  
“They only get my head,” John shrugs. “No-one else gets my heart like you do.”  
  
Bobby closes his eyes and lets out a long sigh, idly stretching his arms behind him. “You’ve really got to stop making me fall in love with you one of these days.”  
  
John grins. “Working, is it? My secret plan.”  
  
“Probably proves I’m insane,” Bobby mutters, and then pinches his nose, like he’s got a headache building that won’t go away. “I really do value your friendship, but you know, I can’t just change….” He trails off mid sentence when he realises that John’s staring at him, and looks bewildered. “What?” He spreads his arms wide in front of him, a pleading gesture. “Have I got a zit?”  
  
“…Value your friendship?” John’s tone is so filled with sarcasm he really could work as a late night comic.  
  
“So?”  
  
“ _Value_  your  _friendship_? What am I, a fucking home loan?”  
  
“You’re getting pissed at me for the language?” Bobby looks at him like he’s insane or an alien; John’s acutely aware of how this is yet another thing they cannot understand.  
  
“Yes, I’m getting pissed at you for the  _language_. You don’t use that fucking Dr. Phil shit with me. You like me, or you don’t. You need me, or you don’t. What you don’t do is fucking value my friendship, cause that makes you sound like the guy who goes on Fox News and does PR, and hey, when you do that I think you’re a shit, too.”  
  
“ _So_  glad we had this conversation,” Bobby rudely remarks, and rubs his temple: it’s clear the headache is here to stay.  
  
“Do you have any idea how much I’ve changed because of you?”  
  
“You only changed so as to get me into bed.”  
  
“Oh. That was low. Even for you, that was low. I went to Rogue a month ago, and I asked to move back in to the big house. I did that for you. I asked her for that for  _you_ , to go back to all those people who know I don’t fit in. And she told me that after going out with them, I’d have to become a completely different person, and too many people would complain at my destabilising influence. I got my ass  _handed_  to me on a  _platter_  by that snide little bitch, and I thought to myself that she would never tell me off like that unless you knew about it, and you agreed.” John’s in full fight mode here; hands curled into fists, eyes glaring into Bobby’s.  
  
“You  _are_  a destabilising influence, John.”  
  
“Get the fuck out of my house. I was going to kow-tow to her for you, and she  _lectured_  me.” He treats the last three words like they’re three distinct sentences; John hates nothing more than being brought low, and Rogue did a number on him he won’t easily forget. “She told me I had a very bad attitude, and  _unfortunately_ , I wasn't making her inclined to help me at all.” He snorts, as if the mockery laden in his voice isn’t enough. “Like she needed a  _reason_  to treat another Goddamn person with respect.”  
  
“I never asked you to rejoin, did I?” It seems Bobby has an answer for all occasions, but John’s far past listening.  
  
“You don’t fucking talk to anyone unless they’re in there!” John bursts out, rage heating his voice. “So I tried to get in there. So you would  _talk_  to me.”  
  
“You really think I wouldn’t otherwise? Why am I here, if that’s the case?”  
  
“I don’t fucking have a clue. You're not bringing any options to the table here, are you? This isn't a  _talk_. There are no answers. Hell, for all I know, you’re just here to make yourself feel morally superior, so when we do self-destruct, you can give yourself a pat on the back for trying as best you could to help the poor, damaged St. John, you upstanding citizen you. Think Rogue’ll give you kudos for that?”  
  
“That’s what you think?”  
  
“I don’t  _know_  what to think. Right now I don't know if you say you're busy because you're actually busy, or because you want cover."  
  
"You think I'd do that. You think I play those kind of  _games_." Bobby's openly contemptuous of the idea, but John's pressing on regardless.  
  
"For fuck's sake, I know you go out with them. You go out with them every fucking night, and you don't have time to say 'How are you?' to me  _once_  in a  _while_?"  
  
"I say  _anything_  to you, John, and I get my head bitten off. And really, I don't give a crap if this is all some paranoid fantasy cause of your jealousy."  
  
"I was there, okay? Don't tell me I'm talking shit."  
  
"Oh, I know you were there. We have telepaths, John. We're not stupid. I had no idea how stupid  _you_  were, though. Or how crazy."  
  
"You tell Kitty about my email, what the fuck do you think that sounds like?”  
  
“It’s not like we mock you.”  
  
“I don’t  _know_  that! I don’t know  _shit_  thanks to you. You’re happy telling her about my side of things, but you won’t share yours with me. It looks fishy. This whole mess stinks.” He exhales, shoulders slumping, and some of his anger goes with it. “Actions speaks louder than words, Bobby. You haven’t given me much of either for a long while. Right now, if I was dying in a ditch, and you found me, I don’t know whether you’d just walk on by or kick me. I do figure helping me is off the agenda, or you would have fucking done it by now.”  
  
“Well, then, I don’t know why I’m here.”  
  
“Guess that makes two of us.” John settles back in the couch, dismissive, and uses the remote to turn the movie back on. The flickering screen plays across his face, and he looks, but he doesn’t really see it. It’s one of the really funny moments, too – the Knights Who Say Ni’s second scene, with the herring. John could quote it, line for line. So could Bobby; but John just watches (but doesn’t see) and listens (but doesn’t hear) the movie as Bobby exits and the door quietly clicks shut behind him.  
  
*


	4. Resilience.

John wakes in the early hours of the morning. That’s not too unusual for him; trained as he is now to noise, to alarm, to the potential for danger. There’s a russle of fabric as someone shifts in a chair, and it’s that sound which sends him over the edge from groggy blinking to alert wakefulness. A breeze wafts in from the Upper East Side, and it’s not the kind of breeze he would have liked to waft – New York City, ain’t it grand? There was a reason he shut the window, after all, but it’s open now and the flimsy curtain blows in the stale summer air.  
  
In an almost instinctual routine he slides a hand under the pillow, grasps the reassuring cool metal of his lighter (the one Bobby gave him, although this doesn’t need to be thought about, like any constant) and with a swift turn he yanks the lighter out from under the pillow and sits up in his bed, not especially caring who can see the faint sheen of sweat that coats his chest. There’s a bitter taste in his mouth; adrenaline, and he’s too familiar with the tang to care about it.  
  
The lighter gets opened with a flick to one side, and John’s thumb is ready to light it. He’s breathing quick but deep, far gone into fight-or-flight by now, emotionally detached from anything that may happen, any consequences that may result, and there he is: in the zone and blinking at the leggy, scaled, blue woman who’s draped herself over his shoddy bedroom chair like it’s some kind of throne.  
  
“I’ve got laundry on the back of that,” John tells her, suitably surreal for the situation. “Mind you don’t crumple it.”  
  
She grins like a shark at that, teeth perfect white in the darkness, and lets out a low, throaty chuckle, almost like a purr. “You’ve gotten slow, Pyro.”  
  
He smiles in return, and lights the lighter. A small flame sputters into being, and that’s nothing compared to the fire in his heart. There’s a certain gleeful calm that’s come over him, familiar, and anticipatory. He’s missed it, this feeling. He’s missed his own capacity to burn: to be what he was meant to be. “You really want to see how slow I’ve gotten?”  
  
“You’re in the habit of wrecking your apartment?” She crosses and uncrosses her legs; the moonlight plays on the scales, and it’s so very Sharon Stone.  
  
“Hey, I’m white trash. You wanna see how little respect I have?” The flame grows a little; a funnel of flame curling around his hand, but she isn’t scared by it. No, Mystique doesn’t scare easily. “I’m more surprised by the fact you’ve turned up in my apartment without an invitation.”  
  
“Forgive my lack of manners.”  
  
“And you’ve motherfucking blue.” John points out, and keeps his voice at the same easy tone hers in, all polite and shit.  
  
“Oh, that?” She gets up out of the chair, flexing a little as she does so. John knows to expect that, just so as he knows to expect every narcisstic little gesture she makes. It’s all part of the routine, and he knows her weak points just as well as she knows his. “You really think any cure wasn’t going to fade?” She sneers. “You think they could stop us being who we are?”  
  
John eyes her carefully; she always was a predator, and liable to do something just a bit unhinged to boot. “Last thing I heard, you gave Magneto up the moment he dumped your sorry ass.”  
  
That earns him a snarling hiss, like a snake or something, body arching towards him. “What makes you think that wasn’t part of his plan?” she asks, suitably inscrutable as she straightens up and crosses her arms over her chest. John long stopped thinking of her breasts as anything remotely feminine: they’re weapons, like the rest of her body, just flesh, and after four years he can focus on the lines of her chest without getting a boner. She used to be the ultimate woman; she used to be fantasy incarnate. Now she's just a soldier, and so is he - look what time has done with them.  
  
John considers this. It’s possible. Magneto did like to play his cards close to his chest, the crazy bastard. He tips his head to one side, lets the suspicion go. They might as well play this game the way she wants to play it. “I’ll let you have that,” he offers, all magnanimous like. “Still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”  
  
“If I’m cured, think of who else might be,” Mystique tells him, and John’s not so stupid he wasn’t thinking of that five minutes ago. She extends one of her legs, and places her toes delicately on the carpet before her heel follows, stalking around the end of his bed like a cross between a queen and a flamingo, every movement deliberate.  
  
“Then why didn’t he come and see me himself then? He’s scared, isn’t he? Scared of the X-Men; scared of Xavier – if you can call Xavier himself anymore – he’s learned that perhaps he lost this fight a long time ago.”  
  
“Are you calling Magneto a coward?” she asks, dangerously.  
  
“No, I’m saying he’s got a fucking clue. I’m saying I’m a coward, and I can’t be fucked fighting anymore. Game over, Mystique. We can’t call them killers and barbarians when we do the same.”  
  
Her smile returns like quicksilver, as sharp as ever. “You’ve been converted,” she accuses him, but seems pleased by the idea. “I suspected as much.”  
  
“Oh, you’ve been watching me, have you? You’ve been studying me.”  
  
“You’re important to the Brotherhood. You’re a symbol of the fight at Alcatraz, of the real plan the normals have for us.”  
  
“Oh, yeah. What about the real plan Magneto had for us? The pawns got a really raw deal, remember? And I thought that was okay, cause who cares as long as we win, right? Except we didn’t win. We got our asses handed to us by a bunch of goody two shoes in leather, and I began to wonder, hey, maybe I shouldn’t have left school after all.”  
  
“He said that to you.” Mystique breathes, her scales shimmering with all kinds of promise.  
  
“Damn right he did.” Course he did. Who else would say the thing John’s never forgotten?  
  
“The Brotherhood needs you, Pyro. The normals will always hate us. No matter how much you try, you can’t change who you are. And being a mutant and going to college? You’re spoiling for a fight.”  
  
As always, when put on the spot, John cracks wise. “Well, gee, Mystique. Thank you for reading my mind there. Didn’t know you were psychic and all.”  
  
“He’s never going to love you, you know.”   
  
John’s control wavers for a second; the flame goes out for a moment, but his expression never changes. “You know him that well.”  
  
“I know you that well. You’re never going to be what he wants. But if you came with me…” The shimmering grows to encompass her whole body; and when it fades, as John knew it would, there’s Bobby Drake standing there in full uniform, with a fond grin on his face. “Hey, Johnboy.”  
  
The flame starts to waver around his arm, sputtering and spurting, the close spiral drifting off course from one heartbeat to the next. “Don’t ever-”  
  
“Don’t ever what?” the fake Bobby asks, impishly now, blue eyes twinkling the way they should. The way they would, John thinks absently, when he used to make Bobby grin. “Don’t ever be here for you? Don’t ever make you happy? Hey, I even wore the leathers, John. I know you like ‘em.”  
  
“Why are you-“ he asks, but he already knows, and his voice is hoarse and the flame is spasming wildly now.  
  
“Because someone’s got to be there for you, John,” he gets in soft reply, a voice that’s full of love and concern, and his heart just yearns for it. “If you come with us now, you can be there for me, too. You can always protect me. Always take care of me. And I’ll never, ever, not be in love with you.” John’s control gets even more fraught, and there are tears glimmering in his eyes now, obscuring his vision. He can feel warm hands cup his face, and that voice, that damned voice that makes his heart a traitor murmurs in his ear. “I need you, John.”  
  
John swallows, and swallows hard. He squeezes his eyes shut, and turns his head momentarily to blink the tears away. In a blindingly fast move, he’s back with his hand right in the other’s face and that fire burns bright. “Still think I’m slow, hon?” he asks, with a low, ugly viciousness to his voice.  
  
“John, don’t you get it?” ‘Bobby’ still pleads. “I’m offering everything you’ve ever wanted.”  
  
“Bobby doesn’t need me to take care of him,” John states, quite evenly. “He’s not some third grade schoolgirl. He’s not needy and I’ve never wanted him to be. It’s not your best imitation, Mystique. I want him to say those words, sure, but I want it to be real.”  
  
A mocking smile spreads itself over Bobby’s face. “Well, Johnboy, I guess you just fucked that chance with me over. The way you’ve always fucked up things with me, so I shouldn’t have got my hopes up you could actually step up to the plate and act like my boyfriend for once.”  
  
It’s cruel and it’s callous, and it’s John’s greatest fear – every sneaking little worry he’s ever had about himself, every missed message, bad date or ‘not tonight, I’m tired’, all rolled up into one cute package loudly proclaiming his general unworthyness as a human being, and specific inability to be a good boyfriend. It’s the kind of thing that makes John curl his fingers a little, and he feels the blood pump a bit faster. That kind of criticism is something he’s still naked to, and he can’t stop the instinctual rage that clouds him. But he’s not a boy anymore, and this is not Alcatraz. Now he’s older, and he knows his buttons, and how they can be pressed. “Trying to get under my skin? Always was your style,” he says, clambering out of the bed, and it works whether he’s saying it to Bobby or Mystique.  
  
That’s the irony, and that’s the thing that hurts, perhaps, more than the insults themselves. Still, he blinks away the anger; buries the pain – the pain is good, after all. Helps him stay sharp, and reminds him he’s alive. Take all the school away from him, strip back all the politics, and all that New York veneer (such as it is) is torn away – he’s just a slum kid from Detroit, surviving on the streets best way he can, and best way he learned how was fight. It’s interesting, maybe, to think about instinct and the lessons that never quite go away, but John has no time for a sociology lesson right now – his heart is too busy pounding in his ears.  
  
“Worked at Alcatraz, didn’t it? Pushing your buttons.” The thing that could be Bobby grins at him, all teeth, the way Bobby likes to grin when he thinks he’s winning.  
  
“Yeah, except you’re not nearly as fun as the original.” The ‘Bobby’ blinks, and damn if Mystique doesn’t believe him capable of it, but he is. “You know, when you first got here,” John says conversationally, “I found out you were blue. And then I wondered if you’d stay blue with third degree burns on eighty percent of your body.” His flame is pure and true and brilliant, and even if that was the real Bobby, John doesn’t know if he’d manage not to stop himself from joining the battle right there in his bedroom, ain’t that a neat metaphor for that way his life’s turned out.  
  
A snarling hiss, and Bobby shimmers as he twists away from John, doing a backflip to land on perfectly blue legs in the archway of his bedroom door. The rest of him soon turns into a her, scale layered upon scale, and John could almost swear she’s pouting. “You’ll choose this life then?” she demands, and although she isn’t loud, the sheer imperious quality of her tone makes her voice carry throughout the room. “This life, this place, this…ratty little hole to scurry around with the rest of humanity?”  
  
John shrugs. “The digs aren’t too bad once you get used to them, and I get great cable. Rent controlled, as well.”  
  
Mystique regards him with contemptuous yellow eyes. “He would have made of you a Prince.”  
  
John resists the temptation to roll his eyes. Equal opportunity and protecting one's people are fine motives, but he knows the empire-building rolls around when people start on the cod-fantasy speechifying. “Yeah, well, Princess, I just don’t look good in velvet.”  
  
“You’re doing this for him?”  
  
That makes John burst out laughing. “Oh, Mystique, you’re so fucking hung up on who you can be you forget what it’s like to be an actual someone. I’m doing this for me, not Bobby, and even without Bobby – and I am without Bobby right now – I’m still doing it for me. I like the city and I like the people and I’d like to learn something.”  
  
She blinks at him, as if suspicious as to whether he’s telling the truth.  
  
“Shit,” John says, and tries not to laugh some more, scuffing his foot on the carper. “This is my house and my room and I’m fucking naked, so get your blue butt outta my house and I’ll play nice. I’m a New Yorker now, after all, and you know how we get when someone threatens our apartments. Don’t come after me. Don’t go after my friends. If you want to set up your own little empire, Princess, do it. But,” and this gets the lighter tossed from one hand to the other, a casual flick-and-catch as the flame sputters and flickers and manages to stay alight while the beady yellow eyes trace its arc, “don’t wear his face again, or I will kill you.”  
  
He turns his back on her then, and shuffles towards those welcoming pillows. His shoulders are a little tense, and he’s tuned to hear her, if she chooses to strike – but Mystique isn’t petty, and she can’t abide futility, so she dismisses him with a grunt of frustration that well sums up her utter contempt before she executes yet another acrobatic move with the grace of a prima ballerina and ends up sitting squat on the railing of his balcony.  
  
“Don’t get yourself killed, Mystique,” John tells her, all reasonable like, and slides under the covers. “I’d be awful pissed if you did.”  
  
She doesn’t say a word at that, but he can picture her perched on his balcony, looking back at him as she tries to parse the sentence – Mystique, so busy reading meaning into everything that’s far too plain and all too simple. Mystique, who used to think he had levels, before she realised John was too instinctual, too in-the-now to have them.    
  
He cracks open an eye to see her through his window, and the diaphanous bit of fabric that masquerades as shade. He knows she regards him with a cool displeasure, and knows he’s been reduced to just another fool in her book, but he can live with that. “You can’t close the window?” he asks, shutting his eyes again, and grins as he puts down the lighter lid with a flick, and slides it back under his pillow. “Bad manners, Raven.” That’s her name, her real name, the one she never told him. It took some ferreting around to get, but John likes to keep secrets that aren’t his and always tries to have an escape plan. He knows, now she knows he knows.  
  
There’s a pause, and John could swear he hears the cogs turn in Mystique’s manipulative blue head.  
  
“…You can catch a cold,” she tells him, growl almost imperceptible in her voice before she launches herself off the balcony, and he hears the faint whoosh of air as she disappears into the night.  
  
He snuggles a little further into the mattress, and doesn’t bother to hide the smug grin on his face. “John Allerdyce: one hundred million. Rest of the world: nil,” he crows softly to himself. They have a gentleman’s agreement now, him and Mystique – or close as, considering neither is a gentleman. But she’ll leave him in peace, and go dream her dreams of empire in safer climes.  
  
“I can do anything,” he mutters, and turns on his side to sleep.  
  
If he can do anything, well, tomorrow, he might just ring Bobby.  
  
Tomorrow he does. 

*


	5. Resignation.

The phone call goes okay, at first. (It's the 'at firsts' that always get him: John doesn't do so well in the long-term.) Actually, the phone call goes better than okay, considering Bobby picks up and doesn’t slam down the moment John speaks. Still, it breaks him just a little bit more (and he figured he was way past broken by now) at the cautious waryness in Bobby’s voice as he answers, and finds that it’s mirrored by a definite anxiety on the part of his own. He cradles the phone to one ear, and presses himself back against the kitchen wall like he could make himself less of a target. It’s an instinctual reaction, based solely out of fear, and he doesn’t even recognise it.  
  
“Hey,” Bobby says, and John curls a little tighter into himself. “John?”  
  
“Here,” John replies, and it’s almost classic Johnboy, voice full of bravado, each syllable a swagger. “You shoulda known it was me when you saw my number come up, Drake, so you have absolutely no right to hang up on me now.” It is classic Johnboy, ego-by-rote; and all the more worrying for it: he hasn’t needed to be classic for years. He’s learned to do things other than bluster, but all that maturity deserts him in an instant, and he’s little more than sixteen again, defensively offensive in an attempt to show how much he doesn’t care by losing everything he has.  
  
“Yeah, more fool me,” Bobby tells him, and it’s tired, so tired, but there’s a hint of a smile in it. “What do you want to talk about, John?” He gets straight to the point, no banter, no riposte: if John wants to recapture his glory days, well, Bobby Drake isn’t about to give one fuck, no sir.  
  
“You should be nicer to someone when they’re about to ask you out,” John chides, and no-one was ever going to say he wasn’t a tryer.  
  
“Ask me out?” Bobby muses, after a long pause, and he snorts. The tiredness unwinds in his voice, and it’s amazing, how they can cut each other up, tear each other down, and defile everything they ever had, and still manage to go back to being this every so often. It’s nothing that hasn’t been said before, remarked upon and discarded, but it still manages to be both a triumph and a trial: when they’re like this, hope almost seems possible.  
  
“Yeah,” John tells him, and he’s cocky again, but it’s all him, all present, and no sign of relying on old tricks. He shrugs out the tension in his shoulders, and he’s on fire now, brain going faster than he can speak, faster than he can conceive of speaking, because there’s a chance of salvation in the humor Bobby gives him. “Thought I might wine and dine you, get you a little drunk, take advantage. Then I blackmail that middle class guilt you got into going out with me again.”  
  
“John…” Bobby goes back to being tired, and John knows he’s stepped right in it again: he doesn’t know how to be anything but himself, but who he is doesn’t cut it anymore.  
  
“Just meet me, okay? We can try and save this thing,” John pleads, and he knows it’s over before he speaks.  
  
“What if I don’t want it to be saved?”  
  
“Then you’re an idiot, but I already knew that.”  
  
Bobby’s polite enough not to respond to that, so John takes the opportunity to rush him with a second plank to his argument.  
  
“It doesn’t matter if we’re together as long as we’re together. There used to be a time where there was nothing we two couldn’t take on.”  
  
“Some of us don’t want to fight anymore, John. And you either fight or fuck, that’s all it is with you. Even if you do with a certain style.”  
  
“You even think I got style!”  
  
“Of course I do, John – I know you’ve got style, and a brain, even if you don’t seem to use it all the time.”  
  
“Sorry I’m not quite clever enough for you, you big ol’ New England egghead,” John jives, and he’s still got the phone pressed against his ear like it makes Bobby all the closer. “Not my fault the only thing Detroit ever gave to the world was cars.”  
  
“Yeah, cause we only gave you people the Declaration of Independence.”  
  
“Also the Kennedy family,” John quipped. “How’s that going for you?”  
  
“John, maybe if we took some time-“  
  
John doesn’t let him finish. John can’t let him finish, because he knows exactly what words Bobby is trying to say. “Look, it doesn’t matter if your friends are shit or you’ve bought into their cult or even that you really can’t color co-ordinate your wardrobe for national television. What matters is that I love you, and I don’t fucking back down.”  
  
“And you want what you want, and you don’t know how to compromise,” Bobby replies, and the lonely ache in his voice adds more power to them than any amount of anger. “I love you too, you know, but you carry on like I just need to fucking wake up and get a brain so I can realise how I’m actually still in love with you. Do you realise how insulting you are to me, making it sound like I don’t know what I feel?”  
  
“God, Bobby, I don’t think that, I just –“ John stops because the words on his tongue feel heavy, too heavy, and he swallows them with wide eyes and a laboured heart.  
  
“…You just need to think that,” Bobby finishes it for him, and John nods silently in reply. “…Yeah, we do need to talk,” Bobby continues, and he sounds about as wrecked as John feels right now, beaten and battered, and all from one phone conversation too many and one epiphany too few. He doesn’t have the right words, and there is no rabbit handy to be pulled out of a nonexistent hat. He gropes for a moment, mentally, but all his rehearsals come to nought, and in the end, he just concedes.  
  
“Yeah. Let’s talk.” John speaks, and his voice is empty, dead, devoid of any humanity. It flows out of his mouth and feels like lead and he can’t even care to hear himself: all he can think about is that it’s gone, it’s over, he’s lost and he has no more tricks, no more threats, and no more one liners of any worth. Now all that’s left is the funeral rites, and the laying-in of the corpse of his erstwhile relationship. “I’ll meet you at the café near my place, okay?”  
  
He will not wait for a response; a response will be ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust, may he rest in peace forever.’ Bobby can either take the hint, or Bobby can go fuck himself. John resolutely ends the conversation by terminating the call with a profoundly simple press of his thumb, and then phone in hand, looks around the kitchen.  
  
John (who has always secretly considered himself more saint than sinner, and thus he earns his name) stands silent in his deserted kitchenette. The moment balloons around him; the world stills and centres upon him with such awareness that he can smell it. He feels a curious attention, as if his apartment itself is watching him and casting him out, and the whole place feels odd. Alien, and he glances around himself with a curious paranoia, briefly certain this must be nothing more than a waking dream. It looks the same; from the scratched lino to the dodgy pantry door to the TV unit covered with newspapers, DVDs and pizza boxes. But this place used to be a home, and once it had two inhabitants, rather than one. John’s only been able to pay the rent since Bobby moved out by working twice as much and enjoying half of life, and now, just now, as he lowers the handset back into the stand, he looks about and knows there’s no place like home, not anymore.  
  
He's lonely, and a little bit lost - but he has to take care of himself now, for surely all he has left to take care of is himself.  
  
*


	6. Renunciation.

The end of the world happens in a café down in the back end of the Village. There’s at least ten others dotted up and down the street; all with huge glass panes instead of brick and mortar walls (cause it’s so the in thing to be able to spy, darling, and John snorts to himself as he wanders by and is watched in his turn. Time was when he would have hunched over and glared at any poor soul who dared to see into his fractured heart and fragmented ego; time was he was too insecure to bear any scrutiny except his own, but times have changed and so he walks along unbowed and unbaited.) Umbrellas have been set up on the sidewalks to shade the crowds from sun and storm, appropriately adorned with the logos of the coffee companies that brung ‘em.  
  
John turns the corner and stops before he gets within the door. The pedestrians mill around him easily on either side, taking no notice. That’s the wonderful thing about cities, he thinks: nobody cares. At least no-one will sympathise with his heartache when it happens, even if it’s on display to the street outside. He catches sight of the blond sitting at a table inside; blond and tall and gangly, already uncurling his body from the seat to meet him, and so John has no choice but to grit his teeth, stomach his growing nausea, and yank open the door so he can lurch inside.  
  
He finds Bobby sitting there, Bobby of the blond hair and the blue eyes, Bobby of the jaded jeans and long sleeved t-shirt and bomber jacket. Bobby who has many friends, an active social life, and a tendency to do something other than study and read. Bobby who tries to be normal; and John who does not.  
  
“I took the liberty of ordering coffee for both of us,” Bobby informs him; friendly but not friends as John unwinds his scarf and lays it over the back of the chair before he slumps into it, legs spread wide. “Cold outside, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah,” John says, and reaches across for the sugar, dumping a heap in his caramel-flavoured double foam mocha latte, and he remembers a time when Bobby used to tease him for it, cause that’s what they did. Words spoken in jest are fine and good, but these days, neither of them are laughing, cause they’ve hurt each other too much and it must come to an end. That’s why they’re here, now: that’s what John’s been dreading.  
  
“You sure you want some coffee with your sugar?” Bobby murmurs lazily, and John’s eyes flicker up to meet him over the coffee cup.  
  
“Don’t get cranky,” he warns, “just because I love my sugar more.”  
  
“Oh, I’m not cranky. Wondering when you’ll have a heart attack, but not cranky.”  
  
“It sure seemed like you were cranky.”  
  
“See how little you know me? Four years and you think I’m cranky. I’m wounded, John.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” John flips him the finger. “People only trust you cause you’re blond, you know. They think you’re too stupid to ever lie.”  
  
Bobby snorts. “Don’t get cranky just because I’m better looking.”  
  
“Better looking?” John raises an eyebrow. “I guess if someone likes the cute, boyish, blond haired blue-eyed type, then you’ve got it made. Apart from the fact you’re an tall-assed freak, that is.”  
  
“This coming from a guy who used to dye his hair orange and still claim he was straight.”  
  
“You see how good we are sometimes, with the banter? This is quality teasing from you and I.” John takes a sip of his coffee and gestures between them; Bobby just crosses his legs and sighs.  
  
“Yeah. Except it isn’t always this way, is it John?”  
  
“Look, we could, I don’t know, talk things through, work stuff out-”  
  
“We tried that,” Bobby states flatly, and doesn’t mind cutting him off. “Sure, we had two good days. And then you made a joke about my friends and we’re fighting like cat and dog again. And sure, it’s good today. You want it to be good, John? You want us to talk, share a few jokes, go out, get smashed and end up back at your place? You know what’ll happen then: tomorrow we’ll wake up in the same bed and I’ll tell you it was a mistake and you’ll get your damn heart broken.”  
  
“I just thought-“  
  
“You didn’t think,” Bobby tells him. “You’re not thinking. Why? Because you’re still in love with me. You don’t like my friends because I’m spending time with them, and not you – hell, you even give Kitty crap about it and all she’s done is try not to take sides ever since we broke up six months ago. But you ride her, although that’s no surprise, considering the way you look at me. I’m not your saviour, John.”  
  
“I don’t want you to be,” John insists, jaw set.  
  
“Like hell-“  
  
“I never wanted you to be!” John raises his voice, and the café stills for a moment, before everyone goes on with their business. That’s one of the worst things about living in a city, he thinks: nobody cares. He leans over the table, hands dug deep in the pockets of his coat almost protectively, and hisses at his ex. “All I ever wanted was for you to be you. Pretty damn simple. And look. It wouldn’t necessarily happen that way-“  
  
“Too right it wouldn’t,” Bobby scoffs.  
  
“I mean, it’s happened before but-“  
  
“I know better now.” Bobby looks at him, angry but holding it in. Angry and hurt, and willing to hurt him in turn. He softens a little, when he sees the pain in John’s eyes. But only a little, and the fact it’s ‘only a little’ makes John’s heart bleed all the more. Bobby doesn’t care enough about him anymore to keep him safe, and nowadays he has to protect himself, first. “I didn’t want things to go this way, but we tried, you know? It’s better for both of us if we just don’t try.”  
  
“You’re saying you don’t want to give things a shot?”  
  
“I’m saying this doesn’t work, John. We tried it the last time, and the time before-“  
  
“What works? You could say life doesn’t work. It ends, after all. So did we, but I don’t find you claiming that life’s a waste of time and letting Logan play slice and dice with your internals. So we keep trying it until it does, Bobby. You always tell me I get too angry. I get angry because you’re worth it, and I would dig my claws into you and not let go even if God himself commanded me.”  
  
“…You’re full of shit, you know this, right?”  
  
“You need me, Drake.”  
  
“I need you?”  
  
“Sure you do. Who else are you gonna bitch about your wife to, when that happens?”  
  
“And I suppose you need me to babble about your girlfriend, right?”  
  
Bobby watches him with a keen fondness, relaxed and leaning back in his chair. There’s blood in his veins, bold and heady, and John can hear the pump-pump of his heart true in his ears. It’s almost within reach, he feels. Bobby still likes him, and anything is possible. Like can turn to love, and John has fought wars. This should be easy, and perhaps it is, for other people. What John forgets is that he’s never won a war, and he always overplays his hand. He needs love, true, but it always undoes him.  
  
“Boyfriend, actually,” he announces with the sort of satisfied contentment like he’s just realised he has four aces, and can’t help but feel the smirk glimmer in his eyes, ready to smoke. Ready to burn. John’s always been one for last stands and epic gestures; battles won and lost because he gives his all and has no more. He has no more, so there’s nothing left to lose but himself. Bobby’s still sitting there stunned, blinking and bemused and probably ready to banter yet again, but John forestalls him by leaning forward over the table, rapacious grin at the ready, victory in his eyes. “And if you told me to dump him and come back with you, I’d do it a second.”  
  
Battle’s over, he realises, when Bobby regards him with shuttered eyes, and lowers his glance to the table. Battles over, and battle’s lost. “John-“  
  
“It’s not an offer, Bobby. It’s just a fact. You were my first. There’s never going to be another you. And for you, there’s never going to be anyone quite like me.” He spits it out because he’s angry now, angry and resentful because he knows he’s lost and the way this could have gone down still feels tantalisingly just out of reach.  
  
“Thank fucking God for that.” It’s not a growl; it’s not harshly spoken; it’s just cold hard fact, and Bobby treats the fact with all the sentimentality it deserves.  
  
“I’m gonna keep trying, Bobby. I’m gonna keep fighting. Cause you’re worth it. And there’s nothing wrong with angry.”  
  
Bobby looks at him like he’s an alien; he looks disgusted and rancorous and beyond over this. “Goodbye, John.”  
  
The words hang heavy in the air between them. John swallows frantically now his mouth’s gone dry, and tries to make his brain work, but nothing’s coming, and Bobby isn’t changing his mind. He considers making a crack; something, anything, to lighten the mood. 'Hey, you remember when I would have chucked a hissy fit? I really have grown as a person.' But he looks over at Bobby, and it dies on his lips, words unsaid.   
  
"Fuck, I am gonna miss you," is what he croaks out, and he can't quite wrap his head around what's happening. There are constants in the world; the sun comes up; the earth is round; and John and Bobby need each other.   
  
"Goodbye, John," Bobby says again, with sad, sad smile, and he's holding back the tears.  
  
"Hey," John tells him quietly, and reaches up to gently brush them away with a finger. "No crying. Not my boy. There's steel in you, remember? You could whip my ass, you don't need to cry."   
  
"No crying." Bobby nods a couple of times.  
  
"I'm just gonna stalk Kitty, you realise." John's smiling, and he's smiling so he doesn't have to do anything else. "Ask her to make sure you're flossing and eating your greens."   
  
“Stay away from my friends,” is what Bobby says, but now he's chuckling under his breath, even as he's crying and shaking his head from side to side. "You're gonna make this hard for me, aren't you?"  
  
"You fucking bet." John grins at him, grins and dies at the same time.   
  
"I don't need you to check up on me, John. I don’t need you can protect me. I can take care of myself."  
  
"I'm not saying you're a hack, Bobby. I'm saying I care." His voice cracks on the last word. Bobby takes a moment, and looks right in his eyes, bending a little to meet them.   
  
"I know that, John. I’m always gonna know that."  
  
"You deserve a happy ending, you know that? You can soar. You're too big for the rest of us."  
  
"I'm just a kid from Boston, John."  
  
John grabs his face and doesn't let go. "You were special to me. You were amazing to me. And that's all I cared about. And you'll always be my Bobby. The definitive fucking article."   
  
"You'll always be my John." Bobby chokes on saying it, but manages somehow.  
  
John sniffles, and wipes his nose on a sleeve. "Now, get outta here."  
  
"John, I'm sorry-"  
  
John just shakes his head. It's the end of the world, and he refuses to break. "Get outta here, Bobby. We tried. You stay any longer and I'll beg you to keep staying."   
  
Bobby gets it, and backs away, slinging his rucksack over one shoulder. He looks furtively between the door and John, clearly still concerned, and John loves him, bright and pure in that moment, for having the guts to be so strong and keep on walking.  
  
*


	7. Restoration (St. John in New York)

Winter in New York, and St. John Michael Gordon Allerdyce is just fucking peachy. He’s enjoying the break, enjoying the city, enjoying the life. In the mornings he rugs up like a freaking Eskimo, just one of several million puffed-up blueberries to people Manhattan, and everyone’s in the same boat, so everyone’s equally cranky and bitching about the cold. When he piles into the local Starbucks with his friends, they uncoil scarves, yank off gloves and beanies, and bundle coats on the seats before trundling to hang around in the ever-existing queue and wait for Good Mother Coffee to warm them through and wake them up again. When they leave to go hang at someone’s place (snacks not included, even though DVDs are required) they good-naturedly carp all over again as they haul on the extra layers, and go and brave the biting wind and blistery cold. John is eager as the rest of them as they roam from one end of the Village to the other, bright-eyed, rosy-nosed and sharp-tongued. The humor is cutting and the words occasionally brutal, but John and his friends – or maybe it should be his friends and John, as although he’s part of the party he always keeps himself a little distant from the crowds, the cliques and the collegiate feel, enabling him to hang back and critique, because he’s seen the world in all its glory, and fucked it over to his shame.  
  
He likes being the outsider, to some extent, and it’s always suited him to be the one looking in. That allows him to carp without changing, to find flaw without salvation, and even if he’s mellowed and learned (some, but not all of) his lessons, his friends laugh and crow and careen and allow him to make his jibes. The days are cold, and the nights bitter; they are warmed by the company, and by the coffee. In the evenings the coffee turns to beer, and in the nights the beer turns to vodka, as John flatly refuses to drink anything else. He’s a man, he says, he can take it, and knocks back the shots with the best of them. His tongue loosens with the alcohol, and remains sharp; but the sharpness is fond now and not unkind: one thing he’s learned is kindness, and how not to be alone. In the mornings he raises himself from where he fell the previous night, staggers to the bathroom and splashes some water on his face. He takes a few moments to think on his position, on his place: he may be the outsider, the oldest one, the former terrorist and current rebel, but in his troupe of friends, he fits, as they are all on the outside. They all held back nothing, spilling secrets and stories as heart and minds conjoin, and in spilling everything, it all became dross. They knew too much, and valued too little, and felt the ease of people who had nothing to lose because they’d already given it all away.  
  
They are good friends, he knows, and fun: but he’s seen too much and done too little to be completely comfortable amongst the bright lights of youth: they shine with an innocence he longer possesses, and they can never supplant what he’s lost. But, they are his, and he is theirs, and if nothing else they’ll probably spend another term or so messing around in each other’s lives. In the morning, in the harsh crisp winter light, he looks in the mirror and likes what he sees; and then he goes to rouse his friends – they all need coffee to combat their hangovers, and the cycle begins again. Most of them are misfits, pierced and dyed and horribly political, tip-toed around by their families (when they have families to speak of, when their families acknowledge them), and John feels a misfit’s solidarity with them. This is not the first time he has associated with a group whose key commonality is that none of them fit in. But these ones have never known war; they are clever, they are students, and so they bicker through the winter, exchanging insults and politics to keep themselves as heated as their argument.  
  
He takes a day off from them; from the laughter and the tears, to spend a quiet day on December the 8th. He wakes early, stays up late, and in between visits Strawberry Fields. There is a small crowd, as there always is, and John waves a lighter and sings along to Imagine with the rest of them. He stays there until the night falls, and knows what it’s like to want to change the world: he comes back year after year because he has known martyrs who died with their work still undone. When he shuffles back home, there’s a presence curled up in the hallway next to his door. Alex is all black hair and snoring slumber, virtually dwarfed by his great big coat. His scarf not only covers his neck, but half his lower face, and after John gives him a solid prod with the toe of his foot, those bright eyes peer up at John. “Done your vigil, then?” he grunts, and clambers off the carpeted floor of the hallway. If Bobby is Boston born and bred; then Alex is a lot more Concord and a lot less middle class. Alex is culture; Alex is wealth. Alex is New Hampshire, a holiday home in the Hamptons and a family who thinks that working for the United Nations turned out to be too limiting for their ambitions.  
  
“Oh, shut up,” John tells him as he turns the key and surges inside with what’s probably his last gasp on a cold winter day, and doesn’t need to turn to see Alex unwind his scarf and dump it on the hatstand. He doesn’t need to turn to feel Alex’s presence hover close behind, or those arms unwind to enfold him, and he sure doesn’t need to turn when Alex unceremoniously dumps his chin gently on the top of John’s head.  
  
“Missed you today,” Alex tells him, and John has to smile at the dry warmth in that voice.  
  
“You just like me cause I’m a mutant and it looks good for a politically correct fucker like you. I make you look cool for your parents.”  
  
“Does that make you my politically correct fuckee?” Alex teases, in a voice that’s all honey and drawling New England temptation. His hand creeps lower, and John has to bite his lip when Alex takes a firm squeeze of his crotch. “Yes  _please_.” John laughs, and Alex leans back so he can bite John’s neck, and somehow they manage to tumble into the bedroom.  
  
Later, after they fuck, John curls up on the pillows and watches Alex wander round his bedroom buck naked. There is Dylan and Stones to listen to, and Alex has brought the finest red wine, as being a well-bred rich bastard, Alex is wont to do. They spend the evening in a blessed out haze, listening to records, chatting and touching.  
  
“You should empty all the garbage in that spare room of yours,” Alex murmurs, tracing circles around one of John’s nipples with a finger. His long hair splays out over his shoulders like weeds, and he glances up at John with clear blue eyes.  
  
John just grunts.  
  
“I mean, I could always move in, help you with rent, be around the place.”  
  
“You just want to annoy your family.”  
  
“They want to meet you.”  
  
John almost chokes on his wine. “Really?”  
  
“Yes,” Alex says, and looks at him with a certain amount of exasperation.  
  
“I don’t know why you’ve told them,” John says, defensively, automatically, and Alex sets his glass down on the bedside table in disgust.  
  
“It’s not like he’s fucking coming back,” Alex tells him, voice full of contempt, and looks right in his eyes.  
  
“I never said he was,” John says evenly, when once he might have burned with rancour and the fire of stars. He’s surprised for a moment at his own calm, and the fact he feels like rock, but then the surprise passes by his ears and is gone. “I’m just not ready to go through the stuff he left behind – our stuff – just yet.” He looks at the growing regret on Alex’s face, and leans forward to kiss his temple, reaching over him to set his own wine glass down. “Come to bed,” he says, and his tone is tinged with fondness and sadness. He lets his hand drag down Alex’s back, and rest just above his ass. “If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have just fucked you, dickwad.”  
  
“I am very fond of you,” Alex says when John turns the light off, and curls up behind him with his arms wrapped around John’s waist and John nestled against his body. It’s warm, it’s comfortable, it’s comforting, even, and John drifts off to sleep with a rather curious smile on his lips and the knowledge that Bobby ain’t the be all and end all of his little world.  
  
Christmas rolls by, and they spend it with each other. All is content; all is fine, and John is not lonely.  
  
New Years, and he spends it alone, but copes. Alex has to spend some time with his family now they’re in the country for once, and besides, John has his own way of entertaining himself. There is beer, there is pizza, and he has fairly good porn, so there’s no reason for a young man to be unhappy. A few days later, and scowling, he wrestles himself into his coat, his beanie, his gloves and his boots, and refusing to look at his reflection in the hallway mirror, goes off to Starbucks. Alex meets him halfway there, thanks to the wonderful world of text messages, and John feels a sudden moment of utter hatred for someone who can afford designer label winter gear. They bitch at each other good naturedly on the way, John slaps Alex on the ass as they troop over the threshold. That is enough to make him trip over himself, and so John just laughs and goes to get the coffee while Alex must be content with shooting him dirty looks as he slides into a booth.  
  
John chats a little with the barista, and hands over a ten-dollar note to pay for the caramel-flavoured double foam mocha latte he has (always) and the flat white Alex prefers with about four extra shots of espresso. He keeps himself to himself as he waits for the coffee, and picks them up from the bar with a reasonably honest nod and half-smile. Alex is already waiting with a pile of napkins and oodles of sugar packets, and one of those plastic stirrers. He takes the coffee as John slides it over the table and sits down, and adds one sugar before passing the remaining packets over to John.  
  
“A man who knows how to make my coffee,” John murmurs, adding more and more sweetness and stirring it in. “I could become used to that.”  
  
“All part of the service,” Alex quips, and takes a sip before smacking his lips together appreciatively. “Ah, caffeine, boon and bastion of college students everywhere.”  
  
“There are five shots of espresso in that thing, total,” John warns him good-naturedly. “You sure you’re not gonna bounce off walls? I hear they frown against that sort of thing in Starbucks, yanno. If we were in Cooper’s, hey, you know anything goes there.”    
  
“If I could, I’d mainline it right into my veins,” Alex replies, and they’re both so caught up in being cutsey-pie and buddy-buddy that neither notices the tall, daffy blond who all but creeps in from the side and behind, obscured at any regular sort of vision.  
  
“Mainlining caffeine? Now there’s an idea I could get behind.” Bobby says it all sweetness and light, all-American college boy familiarity, and John and Alex’s head both swivels to look at him like he’s some kind of alien (or worse, from Nebraska), rather than the left-wing, pinko commie queer-loving Massachusetts liberal mutant spokesperson that John’s come to love and Ann Coulter’s grown to despise.  
  
“Hey!” John says, still blinking, because this is supposed to be the post-Bobby phase of his life and clearly Bobby didn’t get the memo on that.  
  
“Hello,” Alex says, drawing the word out into far more syllables than the dictionary ever intended, and John glances over at him just so he can take the temperature of the situation. John himself is quite calm; John has accepted the reality of Bobby being there and has moved onto dealing. Bobby radiates yearning uncertainty; and then there’s Alex, who manages to sound polite and yet incredibly pissy at the same time.  
  
“Hey,” Bobby replies, glancing between the two of them and John knows that he knows that he’s considered unwelcome by half of the gathering. “Alex, right?” he greets Alex with a nod that’s friendly more than being friends, and briskly steamrolls over anything Alex wants to say. “You were at a party John threw when he started at Columbia, right? He invited a lot of friends round and I got to meet them all.” John (who’s earned a doctorate in the art of reading one Robert Josiah Drake) can see that Bobby’s both undermining Alex – ‘I was there first, buddy, so don’t fuck with me’ – and reassuring him – ‘but you were friends too, so let’s all deal, kay?’  
  
“We did meet,” Alex says succinctly, and he even sounds pleasant, like he’s fucking enjoying himself, and John knows it’s not going to end well. “And then you dumped John, broke his heart and I thought I’ve never have to deal with you again.”  
  
John’s battle-instincts haven’t dulled that much, and he’s always been better at fighting rather than fleeing. He can see the step Bobby takes towards the table; the way Alex curls his hands into fists and stands before they even do it. So he does what he was build to do, through struggle and childhood and fighting to stay afloat: he confronts. Instinctively he puts his hands out, palms open, in front of them, and Bobby stills more than Alex because Bobby remembers what he used to do with open palms and a flamethrower attached to his wrist. “Can it,” he says, firmly but quietly, when once he would have raised his voice. “I am not getting  _my_  ass barred from Starbucks because of  _you_  two.”  
  
He says it with a deadly earnestness, but even he knows there’s a little hint of humor behind the glare, and the humor’s enough to break up the tension a little. Bobby looks at him with questions in his eyes, and John turns to deal with him first. “You know,” he says, calm and soft, “Alex here has a point. You dumped me, broke my heart and now you’re ruinin’ my coffee. You were supposed to go away, Bobby, and stay away.”  
  
“I missed you,” Bobby says, and curls in on himself with a shrug so that he looks like a kid insider his coat.  
  
“That’s it,” Alex declares, and steals Bobby's thunder to slap his palms on the table. He gathers his scarf, his gloves, his hat, and looks between the two of them with murder in his eyes. “You two? Are a soap opera, and I? Am leaving.” He slides out from the table with a practiced grace, and doesn’t bother to hide a snort of derision as Bobby slides in to sit where he was – and he takes his coffee with him.  
  
“God, he’s got an even bigger stick up his ass then when I remember from last time,” Bobby muses, hands steepling as he watches Alex go.  
  
“He’s a friend,” John tells him, fond and exasperated. “I like him.”  
  
“I think he likes you,” Bobby observes thinly.  
  
“’Course he likes me,” John shrugs, and eases himself back in the chair now that the battle is over. “We fuck.”  
  
“You fuck your friends?”  
  
John raises an eyebrow. “You’d rather I fuck my enemies?” he says bluntly, and curls his fingers around the cardboard cup so he can take a sip.  
  
“Never used to stop you before,” Bobby mutters, hands anxiously busying themselves with one another on the table-top and looks away. Months ago, it would have pained John to see this; to see Bobby smarting, because it would have meant that John wasn’t enough, that John couldn’t find the solution or answer the question or know what to do. Those qualms still bother him, sometimes, but now he’s learning to be more human and less messiah; he tucks his complexes in a pocket so he can sort them out later and deals with the matter at hand.  
  
“Why’re you here?” John asks him again, and clicks his fingers in Bobby’s face to get his attention. Bobby wrinkles his nose, reaches out to push the hand away – and they find that their fingers slip together and hold without any volition on their part.  
  
“I missed you,” Bobby repeats, and John squeezes his hand before he lets go because it’s rare that Bobby ever sounds this frazzled. “I mean, I miss you. Not as a boyfriend, or as a lover, but just as a presence in my life. Someone who hangs around, and gives me crap, and won’t cut me any slack…and why am I here again?”  
  
“Cause you love me,” John tells him, voice half muffled by the coffee. The words slip from his lips like they’re just an ordinary truth. Might as well say ‘New Yorkers are rude sons-of-bitches’ or ‘Wow, you really fucked me over at Alcatraz.’  
  
“Yeah. Guess that makes me a masochist,” Bobby sighs, ruefully. “But what am I gonna do, eh?”  
  
“Yeah, cause those uniforms you guys wore weren’t masochistic at all, with the chafing.”  
  
“I seem to recall a certain firebrand who loved me in my uniform,” Bobby counters, but John just keeps on talking.  
  
“-Not to mention dating the emotionally repressed spitfire young maiden who just needed someone to reach out and find her heart of gold, after the requisite amount of struggle and tears. Followed by me, who could pretty much coin ‘spitfire’ as well as ‘hidden heart of gold.’ You  _are_  a masochist, Bobby Drake, and you have a  _type_.”  
  
“I do  _not_  have a type, and even if I did, the type would definitely not be  _you_ ,” Bobby says sullenly, crossing his arms, and John grins at him over his coffee cup.  
  
“You like the ones who make you struggle and make you work. You want the ones you have to change, because that makes you feel like you’re doing something, like you're worth something. God, Bobby, I lived with you for four years. I was your  _cause_. Or maybe your cross.”  
  
“You were what I came home to,” Bobby murmurs, and there’s almost agreement in his voice, wistful and fond. “…Anyway,” he begins, eyes flicking up to John, “aren’t you a little hypocritical? You love me still and I’m not even giving you  _sex_. That’s got to be masochistic.”  
  
“Well, you always were a pain in my ass. Just not the good kind so much nowadays,” John quips, and they both burst out laughing.  
  
“You have any idea how much grief I’ve suffered because of you?” Bobby laughs, and chucks a damn napkin at him. “My mom still reminds me you’re banned from the house whenever I call!”  
  
John almost busts a gut at that. “I’m surprised she didn’t love me. I mean, I stand up for my beliefs, I’m economical and I have no problem using force to resolve conflicts. I’m like Ronald Reagan in a way.”  
  
“If you were like Ronald Reagan, my mom would have tried to date you,” Bobby muses, wiping tears from his eyes. “Hell, if you were like Ronald Reagan, my  _dad_ would have tried to date you…and we are  _so_  not going there. Besides, you were more than enough for one Drake to handle.”  
  
“You know, maybe this is what I needed,” John smiles at him, and Bobby smiles back.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. To be reminded of what a self-righteous holier than thou Massachusetts jackass you always were. I think it’ll really help me get over you,” John says brightly, and all but beams at the purpled expression that Bobby’s face flares into.  
  
“You forgot one thing,” Bobby tells him, after the blood has gone somewhere else and his apoplexy has abated.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’m  _your_  self-righteous holier than thou Massachusetts jackass.”  
  
“No, I remembered that just fine. I’m just a masochist. Remember?”  
  
Bobby snorts in good humor and then lets his face drop into his hands, milking the moment for every fake drop of pathos that it’s worth. “Whatever am I gonna do with you, Johnboy?”  
  
“What you always did,” John tells him, in a voice that’s rich with amusement and love. “Enjoy the ride.”  
  
He gets up from the table, clapping Bobby on the shoulder as he goes to get him a coffee. There will be troubles ahead, he knows; one good day does not a life make. But one good day is a start. When he gets back to the apartment, he and Bobby will get some take-out, and they will talk. There will be no heavy petting, no making-out, no longing glances, and when Bobby leaves, John will ring Alex on his cell and soothe some ruffled feathers. Things will continue as they were going to continue, and it might work and it might not; but the measure of a man is in the attempt, not always the success. Besides, John’s lost a lot of battles by now; he can afford to sit back and at least savour the campaign.  
  
The evening is still young, and until the night casts its spell upon the city, the time – their time - is now, and in the now, there is nothing but possibility. It’s theirs to wreck and ruin, but they’ve been there, done that and paid the therapy bills – they are older, wiser and have thicker skins and stronger spines. Even the pain is not without its rewards, and now they know better than to invite the pain in. There is love; and it is known, and even if they’re not in love with each other, better to love than to hate, better to be friends than not, better to be there and learn and share and  _live_ , for the alternatives are scarcely worth thinking about.    
  
He slides the coffee across to Bobby (just how Bobby likes it, and he’s almost as much as an espresso whore as Alex) and settles back into his seat before handing him his change. “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he says, with a sparkle in his eye, because deep down, John’s a softy idealist with a love for the classics. All will be well cause all  _can_  be well: he’s learned to live without Bobby, and he’s learned to live with that, so neither triumph nor failure rests so heavily upon his shoulders this time.    
  
“Here’s looking at you, Johnboy,” Bobby drawls, and chugs down some coffee.  
  
John smiles, and raises his cup in a salute; it’s just another New York winter, just another day gone by with Bobby Drake and (St.) John Allerdyce: the popsicle and the flamer.  
  
“Don’t get too happy,” Bobby warns him. “Tomorrow is another day.”  
  
Bobby just gets a shrug in reply. Yeah, John thinks, I can live with that.  
  
*  
  
[End] 


End file.
